early Christmas arrival

Yesterday my Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS arrived in the mail. I couldn't wait for today's 12 mile "recovery" run to try it out. I met the other Team in Training people at 6:30 at a local trail with somewhat monotonous scenery. My running buddy from last week's half marathon was there, and she was up for running together. For the first two miles again, I had that "heavy legs" feeling, which is actually in the front of my shin, so I wonder if it's shin splints. It went away eventually, though, and I felt OK for the rest of the run. No incredible soreness anymore after 12 miles, which is a great feeling-- I think my body is actually used to the distances of the recovery runs.

The GPS seemed to fluctuate widely in terms of pace. There were moments when it told me I was running 8:30 miles, when I was certain from my pace that I was going slower. At other times it would give readings of 11:30 when I was sure we were going faster. I'm not quite sure what that was about-- I just turned it on and ran with it. Sometimes I would hit the lap button at the mile markers to see how we were doing, because at the end of a "lap" it flashes up the time. In one wooded development it was having trouble detecting satellites. However, at the end of the run, it neatly summarized my data for me and filed it under History, even letting me know how many calories I burned. Cool. I'm not sure why the pace readings were so disparate, though.