My fitness life changed quite a lot when I started using a Garmin Vivoactive 4. In the past I found it quite difficult to not only gauge how I was doing, but also whether or not I was making any progress.
I have no notion that I am going to become some sort of long-distance-running champion but I am quite pleased when I can at least somewhat effortlessly manage to keep moving at a reasonable jogging pace for an entire 5k. This probably seems like novice level crap to actual runners out there, but I am not really one of them.
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You see, I am not fat, but I am big. I spent the past 15 years when I was focusing on fitness, to be more focused, almost entirely actually, on weight training and not paying much attention to cardio at all. This all changed somewhat recently as I am aiming for a more streamlined physique that might be a bit weaker, but doesn't run the risk of getting fat again, which I feel is easier to have accidentally happen when you are big. I am going to end up losing some level of muscle mass in the process but that is just fine with me. It's that time and I don't want to end up with saggy old man boobs that used to be muscle.
Anyway, I consider it a real accomplishment when I can bang out an uninterrupted 5k without stopping. I am not going to set any land speed records but the trick is to keep it at a pace that I can maintain for longer periods of time.
Now I can't cut this off to only show the 5k because there is a problem with the battery in my watch at the moment that I need to get sorted out, so if I am not actually finished moving at the end of my 5k, it is going to continue to count this as one exercise. The 2k at the end, well I don't really remember why I did that: It was part cool-down and part just walking around and getting home.
If we dig a bit deeper we can see that my BPM while I was actually running for near 42 minutes was around 150, which is good. I do like and start to believe that Garmin readout as you can see a steady incline in my heartrate even though my pace is actually diminishing slightly over time as well.
As you can see, I, like most people, tend to start out a bit faster than I should be going and this kind of tapers slowly down to where I stopped running entirely for just a moment to look at my watch at minute number 40 or so.
I like, and feel as though this is kind of a sign about my overall fitness, about how there is a reverse correlation between my heart rate and pace. I'm still searching for that "sweet spot" of my pace but I believe it is somewhere around 7 minutes per km. This is slow for a lot of real runners but you have to keep in mind that I am around 200 lbs and if I hadn't done those years of bodybuilding, I would probably be around 175 - 180. The goal here is that I will eventually get back down to something like 185, which given my age I think would be idea.
I still sweat like mad but my breathing is never labored at this pace and thanks to some of the David Goggins I have been reading I now feel as though I have a decent mental block when my legs are telling me that they want to stop moving.
I don't know what the end goal here is exactly, I have no races that I am entering anytime soon. I just want to find a pace that I can maintain for long periods of time and the Garmin is really helpful as far as this is concerned. Of all the technology that I have ever purchased, this is one of those rather expensive "add ons" that I would highly recommend to anyone that is trying to stay in shape, or even better, trying to get back into shape.