You've converted me

First, I will announce the winner of the Garmin Forerunner 210... since I know you're dying of suspense ;)  After I went through and deleted the "replies" to comments (I wanted to make sure that everybody's names were in there a maximum of two times, and since some people wrote two comments AND replied to other comments, I had to filter those out). We were left with 701 comments. I used Random.org to pick a number, and of course they couldn't make it easy with a low number (for some reason I didn't think to count backwards from 701--groan)

I counted (three times, to make sure) number 655, and that would be The Lingo Family:

Congrats!! Please send me an e-mail at SlimKatie (at) runsforcookies (dot) com within 24 hours with your mailing address, so that I can send out your Forerunner :)

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Next, if you haven't already seen it, I posted a book review earlier today. And TLC Book Tours is giving away a copy to one of my readers, so make sure you check it out! I made a Google document form so it's easier on me rather than having to count posts to find a winner (I tried some of your suggestions with copy + paste, but it didn't work for me). I think I will look into the Rafflecopter that some of you mentioned for the future.

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Now, on to my "regular" post...

I had a 9-mile run on the schedule today, and my knee was feeling okay. Jessica and I met at 8:00 this morning to run together. We went to our usual parking spot for two out-and-backs from the car. Normally, we wouldn't have to stop by the car for a 9-miler, but if our knees were hurting, we wanted the option to quit early.

We decided to do a 9:1 ratio of running to walking. I set the Garmin to do intervals of 0.9 miles and 0.1 miles. We started out running 0.9, and then the Garmin beeped (and vibrated!) so we walked for 0.1. And we did that sequence 9 times, for a total of 9 miles.

I have to say, I LOVE doing the walk breaks! I have always been kind of perfectionist when it comes to running, and I thought walking during a run was "cheating" somehow. For that reason, I never, ever took walk breaks until our recent 18-miler. But with my knee issues, and all of you telling me to try out walk breaks (and Jeff Galloway's system), I decided to give it a try. You've totally converted me.

I don't know that I will take walk breaks for shorter runs, but when I'm battling a knee injury or doing an uber-long run, I'm definitely going to do the run/walk combo. And I don't think of it as "cheating" anymore--we actually finished at a faster pace than we normally would when running for 9 miles straight! One-tenth of a mile isn't long, and it gave us just enough time to grab a couple of sips of water (and a Gu at mile 5) before we had to start running again.

During each walk break, I also snapped a picture of the route we were on, so you could see what we see when we run :)

Mile 1

Mile 2

Mile 3 (I love this trail part of the run!)

Mile 4

Mile 5

Mile 6

Mile 7

Mile 8

 My knee started to hurt around mile 3, but just when it was getting bad, it was time for a walk break. Then when we started running again, it felt good. And it went like that for the rest of the run--each time my knee started to hurt, after the walk break it was good to go again. Jessica said the same thing--her knee was feeling okay today!

This kind of renewed our excitement about running. Lately, we've been dreading it and feeling really down about it. But having such a good run today upped our spirits for training. I thought for sure we'd end up having to skip tomorrow's 5-miler because of our knees hurting, but we both felt so good after today's run that we're sure we're going to be able to run tomorrow.

I was very surprised to look at the stats on the Garmin after our run. I didn't want to look at them during the run because I thought the slow pace (from walk breaks) would discourage us. But surprisingly, the walk breaks didn't slow us down one bit, and our training pace was faster than usual, even with the walks factored in!

The page views on the Garmin for each lap is different than the 305, and I really like it. It also includes a little map of what each lap looks like:

In comparison, on the 305, when you are viewing each lap, it looks like this:

We were eager to look at our splits to see how the run/walk thing went:

I have no idea how mileage added up to 8.99 and not an even 9.00...?!

The 19th lap was from me accidentally pushing the start button while sitting down to type--just ignore it ;)

Our running pace was faster than our usual training pace, and our walking pace was pretty fast, too (I'm sure Jessica could have walked much faster, but I certainly couldn't!). So I am definitely converted to a believer in the run/walk method for long runs. The only disappointment in the whole run is that I only burned 736 calories for a nine-miler! Normally I would have counted that as 900 calories burned. This new Garmin is keeping me in check ;)

I'm going dip-netting with my dad and the kids tonight. Anyone else know what that is? ;)  I'll post pictures tomorrow.