I'm With Furious

The sun was out bringing heat and the hint of summer and I had the chance to finally hit the trail with my running partner in crime, Mr. Furious (currently on hiatus from roller derby fame to finish his long sought after but ever elusive undergraduate degree). I stopped and picked up a new Garmin Oregon 550t unit on my lunch break today. After much soul searching I settled on the handheld GPS unit over a wrist watch due to the fact that I can monitor my trekking and hiking as well as get turn by turn vehicular directions as well as monitor my running with the handheld and it runs on AA batteries and those batteries last a few days opposed to a few hours in the wrist watch. With the multi-day trips I have planned for the summer a battery life of a few hours will not work and would be as worthless as my iPhone in that regard.

Now that I have a new device that can monitor my distance I put it to the test with our inguaral run as we officially started our marathon training. The Nike+ recorded our journey as a trek of 2.17 miles when the Garmin registered the actual distance of 5.28 miles. This was a great run on the trails of East Anchorage through the University district. I hadn't been on some of these trails since the marathon last year. It was great to get out and run with Mr. Furious again. Our distance seemed so easy and comfortable. It is always better to run with someone, the conversation makes the miles go by rather quickly and the scenery is always a great bonus. We will be on te trails more soon enough. The snow was just starting to get soft and if the warming trend keeps up theer will be muddy spring-like conditions soon.

With 5.28 miles added to the tally that brings the total for the year to 110.07 and 4895.93 miles to Davie. The maiden voyage of the Garmin was a smashing success. I need to get out get familiar with this unit but so far it is a great device.

This puts me just past Sheep Mountain Lodge and Alascom Knob. The Knob is a radio relay tower and provides a bounce for cellular communications in the area among other things and is an access point for one of the largest collection of ATV trails in Alaska. This area was the site for The Alaska Adventure Racing Club's 24 hour race (Bushwhack This!) last fall. The race had teams from Texas, California and Alaska who competed in a multi-sport race involving canoeing, mountain biking and trekking along with orienteering and some bonus events thrown in for fun. The area is breathtaking and the adventure race was a great experience for all.