I ran home after work tonight...

I ran home after work tonight; first time ever. What would spur on such extreme activity? I've been wanting to run/ride more frequently, but it's been difficult to find the motivation. I thought back to a time where I always tried to ride just that little bit harder. Turns out that was when I had a bike computer. It was decided, geekdom is to be my exercise motivator.

Last week I bought the Forerunner 310XT, designed for running and riding. It has a heart rate monitor, cadence monitor, and a GPS for tracking a whole bunch of data.

After installing a bunch of drivers and plugins, I updated the 301XT's firmware and was ready to go... Except first you need to plug in your height, weight and age for energy burning calculations. Then setup the display screens, make sure the HRM is detected, turn on/off auto settings like auto pause (for traffic lights, etc.), auto lap, and auto scroll. It's all very detailed. Thus far, however, I've been very happy with the features and user interface.

I think the exercise plan is going to work. I barely noticed that I was running, too busy looking at BPMs, time/distance, and trying to outrun my virtual partner that was doing 5:45 minute kms. The jerk beat me by 2mins.

My first run is recorded on the Garmin website.