Week 1 of Marathon Training

So here I go again.  Week 1 of an 18 week training plan starts this week to prep for a first week of May marathon. Some updates. I've been building up the mileage for a bit and should be okay starting the trianing though I haven't done any extensive LT work so the first run which is supposed to include 4 miles at LT pace might be a bit of a wake-up call.  Have been pretty good with the build-up of mileage until this week where I've been eating nothing but turkey leftovers for the past 4 days.  Finally done and now I can get back to some normal food. 

I still haven't gone in for a follow-up to do my ECG, because it's quite weird as I haven't had the HR problem crop up for the past few weeks until yesterday.  I'm starting to think there's a mental component to this since when I don't seem to care whether the HR spikes, it doesn't, but when I start to think about it, it does.  It could also be because I'm getting more sleep these days, so that's something new.  In fact, these past two weeks, I think have been the longest I've gone in the past year without the HR spiking issues which is a good sign.

I've been giving some serious thoughts to buying a new GPS watch.  While my current one is fine,  I've really been eyeing the Polar M400 which is currently 20% and is just over $200 and comes with a HR monitor strap.  It now has lap pace and will display the HR when it's paused which are two things that my current watch doesn't do and annoys me to no end.  As an additional benefit, it also functions as a fitness tracker if you're willing to wear it all day and sleep with it.  It also syncs wirelessly with your phone.   I'm sort of on the fence about buying it since it appears that's it's still a bit buggy and the GPS performance isn't getting good reviews and it doesn't work with android phones yet. They say that updates to the firmware and software are coming, but I've been fooled by the "Give us your money now and we'll fix it later" line from some tech companies when they don't ever both fixing anything so I'll wait and see. The fitness tracker thing is interesting, but I'm more inclined to wait for the Fitbit Charge HR which looks like it's going to be launced towards the end of January where it will track HR all day long. I'm certainly looking at buying one of those.