I have spent a week and a half with the Garmin 45S and it doe what I expect the Garmin to do, but with more regular charges. The battery is rated to last for a week working as a watch and up to 13 hours working as a sports tracker. You can track your workouts with GPS, GPS and Galileo or GPS and Glonass.
This watch is designed for running, rather than walking or other sports, so it provides running data that is easy to read, whilst running.
I am approaching the five kilometre mark now. I am getting close to being able to run five kilometres in a row once again. It is paradoxical that I find running hard, compared to walking and cycling. I was able to run up to 13 kilometres before. Now I’m aiming for half, to a third less.
If I ran somewhere flat I would find running easier. One of the challenges of running in this landscape is that it undulates.
Today I ran four kilometres, after walking fifteen kilometres yesterday and my legs felt tired. They felt heavy and I thought that I wouldn’t make it to the target distance. I did, but it was a game of will.
Usually I go for a run, and then I walk. Today I did the opposite. I went for a walk, and then I went running. Part of the reason I felt tired is that I ran across a grassy field uphill.
This morning I decided to go for a run, rather than studying or doing other things. I ran along one of my usual routes thinking that it would be quiet but it wasn’t. Groups of people walking two to three abreast, or more were blocking different roads so I deviated through fields, turned around or rerouted.
Out of pandemic I would have spent weekends doing things with people so I would have been one of those people doing something with others.
Normally I walk from village to village. My walks can take me through four to six villages per walk. I walk from village to village in part because I live in the middle of a landscape where walking from village to village is easy.
I had doubts about today’s run because I can feel various parts of my legs. I can feel that they are under a different strain than usual, due to the running.
I am going for a run and a walk three times a week at the moment. The run is set by the Garmin Coach and the walk is set by the route I have chosen to use on that specific day. By running the first part of my daily walk I increase my fitness, according to Strava, Sports Tracker and one or two other apps.
At the same time by running, rather than walking these routes I am saving time.
Since the start of the year I have been running regularly. Yesterday I went for a run and I found it easiser than other runs. It might be thanks to the audiobook, on the one hand, and to consistent training on the other. I am not pushing hard. The training program is a 5k programme over twelve weeks. I don’t need twelve weeks for this. I was a runner before. I don’t care about beating distance records or other things.
At the start of this year I started running again. This wasn’t a new year’s resolution. I just decided that I wanted to start running, so I did. For five years I have been walking around in circles. Some take me above the A1 motorway and others take me below it. The walks are all familiar and I do them so regularly that I see the changes from week to week.
I am getting back into running at the moment. I have run several times recently, irregularly enough not to feel pain in my knees or other articulations so this is a good sign. The advantage of running, over other sports, is that it’s easy to catch a bus, car, train, parapente or other form of transport and start running. The second advantage is that it is twice as fast as walking.
Despite having a frosty morning today I still decided to go for a run in the morning rather than the afternoon. I mention the frost because I noticed that one velux had the usual frost fractals but the others were clear. This is curious.
Frost fractals on a velux
I wore a thermal layer, a fleece, a t-shirt and some running shoes that were not waterproof. I would have run one route but a couple took the entire width of the road so I ran along the side of the road, and in the grass by the side of the road.