I tried to save a little money this week...by changing the battery in my trusty Timex Ironman watch. I have had this since that summer day back in 2006 when my stepdaughter and I went to Sports Basement in San Francisco in preparation for our joint marathon effort in Portland, Oregon that October. It was not easy for me to let go of the $50...but I convinced myself I "needed" this watch, because it allowed me to set intervals.
For every marathon I've run I've used some variation of Jeff Galloway's run-walk interval system. I am thinking the older I get the more useful this will be. Most of the time I've done 3 minutes running to every one minute of walking. If you think that's nuts, JG himself does 1:1 ratios..and still finishes marathons, along with his wife, in under 5 hours. Anyway...before I bought this watch I had been using just a regular watch, trying to keep track of the intervals in my head. This simplified matters. Elise (my stepdaughter) refused to express an opinion on whether it was a good idea...just in case her mom got mad that I'd spent the 50. She didn't..and the watch has been with me for 18 marathons and oh so many training runs, from Portland to Barcelona to Dublin to Seattle, Austin, Sacramento, Big Sur, Napa, Rochester and Santa Barbara, and others, consistently keeping track of my time, so I didn't have to.
I had noticed for weeks recently that the display was fading, and taking about 10 seconds to fully illuminate in between Rock and Roll New Orleans training runs. But, it still worked, so I paid little attention until, a few days ago, it went dark.
Knowing that watch repair shops charge up to $20 to replace the pooped power source with one that was fully juiced, I decided to pay the $3 for the battery and do it myself. Everything went swimmingly...until I got into the gym hot tub after a 5 miler at Pt. Pinole State Park. It took seconds for me to figure out I had not sufficiently resealed the case. The picture above it what I am stuck with now.
I have a Garmin 305, that does intervals, sort of. Now I am faced, with just over a week to go to running the Big Easy, with a dilemna. Do I try to run RNRNO without an efficient interval timer...or go spend another $50 for the peace of mind of having a new Ironman on my team?
I would ask Elise...but she'd be no help...if past experience is any guide.
Gotta run!
4 comments:
I think you need to buy the watch.
Enjoy New Orleans!
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The garmin doesn't do as good of a job with intervals?
If it is any consolation, I'm pretty sure my Timex watch had a note in the instructions which said the waterproof claim was out the window once you did a battery change -- so even a professional probably couldn't have saved it for you.
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