Thursday, June 5, 2008

It's here! It's here!

My new toy!!!


After months of debating whether I wanted to get the new Garmin 405, I decided to go with the 305, the older model because i've heard the new 405 isn't quite all that it's cracked up to be and i'd rather go with something "tried and true," for now.

What is a Garmin? Well, it's an excellent device that i'm sure my brother-in-law Jeff will have a field day making fun of me for---when I got my Suunto heart rate monitor, he kept going "beep beep, you're going to explode..FASTER!"

The garmin is a GPS system, and honestly, I think it is the hugest thing to wear on one's wrist, but during my runs now i'm not only looking at how far or how fast i'm going, but I really want to know how steep each hill is and if i'm doing a true "hill," run, that sort of thing.

So, how much did this bad boy cost? Well, we got an amazing deal from Costco. Drumroll please: Total, with tax and shipping: $193.00. It originally retails for $299 at REI.

Dave has a 205--which doesn't have the heart rate monitor and we paid over $200.00 for his! So, really, with the new 405 being close to $400 and Dave's smaller model being more expensive, I.........got a great deal! Does that sound like justification for a purchase? Of course, the shopper in me can *always* justify a purchase =0.

Seriously, I am STOKED to have this little instrument now. Once I figure out how to upload stuff, maybe i'll be able to put more useful information on my blog. Amanda, my coach is just anxiously waiting to monitor my progress with this toy.

Other news: i'm finally in a regular masters swim program that seems to be keeping things interesting.

I talked with Amanda today about my training, etc and i'm feeling great with how things are progressing. One thing that has me slightly concerned is my tiredness. The thing is, when i'm tired from training it isn't the usual fatigue that goes away with sleep, it continues and honestly, some days I feel like I haven't slept at all. I know, most of you are thinking "I'd be tired too!".....it isn't that kind of tired, it's like the never ending tiredness, even when I was on vacation the last two weekends, I just don't have a lot of energy in general.

Amanda suggested I get my iron levels checked to see if i'm low on iron. Typically, a female can get by with a level of 12, but an endurance female athlete should have close to 80. The thing is, I thought I was eating enough foods with iron, but there is a good chance, i've definitely overlooked things, so i'm going to pop on over to the Naval hospital with some assistance from my husband to slide right into the blood lab (without having to be number 19 on hold trying to schedule an appointment). The joys of Navy medicine.

We also discussed adding two more races to my schedule which i'm really excited about and those will most likely be: the Long Beach Half Marathon on October 12th and the SOMA Half Ironman at the end of October...both will allow Dave and I to chill with his family.

We just found out they changed Dave's schedule for Nov/Dec and we're both pretty annoyed-----he can't take vacation for either of these months. Ugh, so there goes his Sacramento race we were looking forward to (that may be negotiable, but we're not sure yet), Thanksgiving and Christmas. We don't live close enough to family for a "day trip," so this was really upsetting to both of us, but, we'll see if maybe family wants to come our way, who knows!

As for Ironman, we're not sure if he'll be able to make it, he's looking into flying in Saturday night and leaving Sunday night, more motivation for me to finish 11:35:31 or better =0.


And...I'm not up for hearing "at least you'll be together," ....yeah, most normal people get to spend the holidays together, why do we have to wish for the normal things, it should just be a "given." I rarely get too personal on my blog, but sometimes balancing the military aspect and the medical aspect of Dave's job is really tiring, you never really have anything "set,"It can change at any moment. It's difficult for me to accept sometimes and even more difficult and painful to explain to others.

I don't usually care about "short term plans," like my weekends don't have to be all annoyingly planned out, but long-term plans, like vacations, racing, family visits, I prefer those to be planned, so I tend to be really inflexible when those long-term plans change.

Like everything else, we'll roll with it...begrudingly...but, I know there are worse things in life than having a schedule change and not being able to see family over the holidays and......i'll say it before anyone else does....at "least we're together." I'd rather not re-live Thankgiving and Christmas of 2004 again when Dave was in Iraq...and i'll be thankful we're together.







2 comments:

Paul said...

Sweet! I just picked up a 205 for 120 bones since RRS was blowing them out. It's super cool. If you have a pc try the sporttracks software from zonefivesoftware. It rocks.

Anonymous said...

To really take advantage of you nice new toy check out sportTracks.
http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/