Garmin Forerunner 910XT Update & Wrist Band Replacement

I got my FR910XT 2 years ago during the race expo of Brooks Half Marathon. The unit is great and I loving it. It got long battery life. It may not capable to do 20 hours now, but for the past 24 months, I never drained it. During low training mileage (<140km/mth), I may charge it once every 6-7 weeks. Even with high training mileage (250-320km/mth), I only need to charge it fortnightly cause I ran with the back light on during my weekly speed repeats. Run my first ultra 50km with full charged battery, and it still had 50% left after the 7.5 hours race. Anyway, after few firmware update, those issues that I don’t like from my previous review still remained. I just need to get use to them.

Snapped at the right hand side, cut the left to remove the piece for installing the expender band

Yesterday, when I prepare to heading out for the routine morning run, I found out that the wrist band snapped! My wrist is only normal Asian sized, hence there is actually some gaps between my wrist and the FR910XT. This created a stress point over the wrist band and finally it gave way. No choice, hence I held the FR910XT on my hand for my 4k easy.

Knew that Malaysia authorised distributor will sure have replacement, but I tried to search online for its pricing. Amazon selling at about USD$19.90, with postage should be around USD$25 (MYR82-85). And I saw some interesting comment in the users’ feedback: there is an expender band came with the FR910XT box, which you can use it as temporary fix for the snapped band. Then I called AECO yesterday to order their stock to PJ Digital Mall, so I can collect it today. And it cost MYR100 from AECO.

This morning, I dig out the expender band for the speed repeats. I have no problem to hold it on my hand (I usually race with a 500ml bottle on my hand, did that for my 50k too), but it will be big disturb during a speed repeats. The expender band holds up the snapped band nicely. Nonetheless, the snapped part left only very short section for the expender band to hold on, it was a bit loose. It will no be a comfortable replacement for the snapped wrist band, but it served well during this emergency.

Snapped Wrist Band with Expender Band

Expender band in action

Expender band in action

Original Replacement Wrist Band from Local Distributor

Replacement Kit, the 2 screwdrivers used to held the screw from both sides 

Done! Fixed in 10-15 minutes

Garmin is coming up with new and better product, like FR620. But I will stick to FR910XT for another 2-3 years (or earlier if the battery gone flat). It will be a very important partner for my sub-4 journey.

Happy Running!

Mood Recovery

Last weekend was tough! The hazy and hot weather is bad enough but it just getting worst over the weekend.

It started from Friday evening, with DSAI case. Then after my hazy Saturday morning run, I got the news of missing MH370. The mood just dip into the bottom. Come Sunday morning, it was just too hazy to run (API > 100). I was terrified with these 2 unidentified persons boarded with stolen passports. I will be flying to lots of places this year! Lucky I got another novel at home for my consumption, else my family will sure suffered from my bad mood.

Anyway, did a short & quick run this morning. It helps to stabilized the mood. But I need more than stabilizer on a Monday! Hence I plugged my earphone to my mobile, play the "Spirit of the Marathon" over the phone, just listen to it when I am working. The movie was fantastic, I watched it many times so I don't need the video. The music, the conversation, the noise over the race field, the foot steps, the starting horn, the progress reported over the Chicago Marathon, kept me calm, and slowly pull me up into positive side. I think this is the benefit of having some highly energy good/positive addiction. The issues happened over the weekend still disturbing me, but I felt I got more energy to deal with it now (at least emotionally).

Have a good week ahead, keep running and keep smiling!

Project Sub 4

I had this plan in mind since I was injured in early January. I saw the benefit of the structural and demanding training program, and I wanted more! The feeling of able to run faster from race to race is fantastic! And I started to wonder what will be my finishing time if I concentrated to only full marathon training. It seems to be a big leap because my PB marathon was done with 4:59’57” in Munich, and I wish to shed 60 minutes from my PB. But after following thru the training program for 3 months, I achieved 3 PB in 3 races (10k, 21k and 25k) with each race completed without burning out. Hence it seems to be very natural to aim high, provided I completed the whole 18 weeks program faithfully.

Aim to finish with sub 4 hours, like a superman :)  (photo from internet)

The key learning from the injury was played too hard and too many races between the high mileages training program. With the high intensity training program (70-90km per week), the body don’t have enough time to recover between races. I crashed after completed a training month with 318km recorded training mileage. First thing that get between me and the training program will be races. So I made a decision to not register or running any new races until my target race: SCKLM (registered Kuala Kangsar 15k, so I will still go for it).

The plan is, after Titi50, I will restart the 18 weeks training program with 4.5 hours FM target time. Round one will finish around June. Then I will continue with another 18 weeks program with 4 hours FM target time. This will help to condition the body to high mileages training, and workout the pace for sub 4 marathon. Anyway, my work demanded more travels this year. I will need to deal with that so lots of training will be expected over the treadmill. Apart from the travels, the most challenging part for this plan will be no clicking on those races registration.

There will be less race report posts in this blog, but I will sure update regularly on my training progress here. Wish me luck.