Gadgets

I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday! This week is flying so far!

For anyone who is interested, this last weekend went ok with my daughter being away. It was helpful to know she wasn’t too far from me…and estranged husband thing seemed to be as kind as possible during the whole thing.

I kept myself busy of course, and started off the weekend after dropping her off on Saturday with a 2 hour workout and gadget test! I had been lusting over owning a Garmin for a little over a year now, and when I found a deal too good to pass up on eBay, I finally took the plunge! I bought a Garmin Forerunner 305. It’s a bit ancient, as far as Garmins go, but I was so excited! I knew it was a great device (if Runsforcookies used it, it has to be good!) for a beginner at least, and the biggest reason I bought it was so that I could start monitoring my heart rate better. I bought the watch and heart rate chest strap, as well as a foot pod to use, since most of my runs right now are indoors on a treadmill.

I went to the YMCA for my run on Saturday, and even though it took me a while to get suited up (I put the foot pod on my shoe backwards the first time, of course), I was pleased with the results! The run wasn’t too bad – it had been a while since I ran since I had had the racing heart issues and was using the elliptical a lot. The chest strap didn’t bother me at all, which was great, and though it took me a while to get the watch to stop beeping at me (it had been set to go off with certain heart rate zones), once I got it a bit figured out I really enjoyed it!

The watch itself is a bit bulky…so it was nice that since I was running on a treadmill I could just take it off and set it on the treadmill itself. I would have left it on, but going through the silly menus while running was a bit hairy, lol!

My first forerunner run!

Now, the truly awesome part was that I was paying so much attention to the heart rate and such, that I never even bothered to look at the run time for the entire 5k I ran. It wasn’t until several hours later that I bothered to look, and was so surprised! I had shaved nearly a minute off of my previous PR!

All in all, the first run with the Garmin was a success!

After the run, I did 15 miles on the stationary bike. I’ve been watching Sons of Anarchy while working out, and that definitely helps the time go by faster!

As luck would have it, also over the weekend, a good friend of mine who has dropped a ton of weight and has also been a great inspiration to me was selling one of HER gadgets. She has used a Nike+ Fuelband for over a year, and credits it with helping to keep her on track. For Christmas, she bought herself a new one, and wondered if I’d like to buy her old one. The cheapest I had found used ones online for was around $150, and she would sell hers to me for $60! So I jumped on it, and started using it Monday.

So far I’m really enjoying it! It’s not a hugely complicated device that can track a million different options like the Garmin, but what I’ve found these last two days is that it’s an excellent motivational tool to make me get up and move each day. It’s only been two and a half days, but I am definitely motivated to get that little LED reward:

Move or be shamed! 😛

It may be silly, and of course you set your own goals, so cheating is always an option…but it’s a challenge, and challenges are part of what’s kept me going this last year.

The Nike+ Fuelband can’t be used for swimming, and probably would not be very accurate for biking, since the accelerometers inside are pretty much calibrated to make it a very fancy pedometer, but for elliptical, running, Zumba, etc…it’s a great tool!

So the last few days have been about learning gadgets, and adding tools to my arsenal on the assault against fat. So far I’m pleased and it’s helped to re-motivate me. Now if the scale would jump on board I’d be very happy…she has not budged for me for 2 weeks!

Grrr.

What about you? Have you used these or other gadgets to help get you going? 🙂