Category: Running

Another Nokia N9 vs. Garmin GPS test

These results are much like my previous ones. Close to buildings or other difficult places the N9 GPS performs significantly worse than the Garmin. This is somewhat surprising since the N900 performs very similar to a Garmin. Could better GPS-data on the N9 be just a software-update away? When is someone going to try to get TJ Lindfors's RTK-GPS Openmoko hack to work on the N9 ?!

Nokia N9 vs. Garmin Edge 800 GPS Test

My legs aren't exactly recovered from Saturday's marathon, but a slow 5k jog anyway today. Sports Tracker was released for the N9 last week (or was it earlier?), so I thought I'd do some GPS testing. Held Garmin Edge 800 in my right hand and the N9 in my left. The results aren't that great for the N9:

I should do a test on the bike later. Maybe include the Garmin 405cx and older C7 phone also?

The touch-screens on these devices are different: Edge 800 works fine with gloves, N9 doesn't work at all with gloves.

Rautaveden maraton


Rautaveden marathon, the last 'big' marathon in the Finnish running calendar, loops around lake rautavesi around 50km west of Tampere. Rogaining and biking earlier in the fall together with a week of flu meant that it was either this event, or possibly Åland a week earlier (but that would have been more of a hassle travel-wise).

The first 9k of the route is quite flat and takes us out of the city and onto the big Tampere road. Almost the whole 9-10 km interval is a big uphill which resulted in a slowish 5m:50s kilometer-time. After that it's a bit of downhill and varied terrain until around 19k (after ski-resort Ellivuori) where there is a big downhill. For me a fast kilometer-time of 5:02 - but as I haven't practiced running downhill much I think my legs got beat in that downhill pretty bad. After that it's more flat/varied until the turn at the top of the map around 26k. This is where my legs were about finished 🙂 I then walked most of the steeper uphills, and some flat-bits too during each kilometer between maybe 32k and 39k. At the end after the last drinking-station at 40k I ran again all the way to the finish for a time of 4h 12min 40s - a new personal best, but not the sub-4h I had maybe hoped for...

Splits for the first and second 20k:
1-20k: 1:49:51 (5:30/km)
21-40k: 2:06:50 (6:21/km)

Or broken down into 10ks: 59min, 2nd 62min, 3rd 67min, and 4th 76min.
1-10k: 54:59 (5:30/km) (HCM: 59m)
11-20k: 54:52 (5:29/km) (HCM: 62m)
21-30k: 1:00:06 (6:01/km) (HCM: 67m)
31-40k: 1:06:44 (6:40/km) (HCM: 76m)

Or broken down into 5ks, and compared to last year's Helsinki City Marathon:
1-5k: 27:13 (5:27/km) (HCM: 29m)
6-10k: 27:46 (5:33/km) (HCM: 30m)
11-15k: 27:29 (5:30/km) (HCM: 30m)
16-20k: 27:23 (5:29/km) (HCM: 31m)
21-25k: 28:57 (5:47/km) (HCM: 33m)
26-30k: 31:09 (6:14/km) (HCM: 34m)
31-35k: 31:27 (6:17/km) (HCM: 36m)
36-40k: 35:17 (7:03/km) (HCM: 40m)

Finally the all important medal:

A comparison of the elevation-graph from the organizers website with data from my garmin 405cx. The heart-rate graph clearly shows how hitting "the wall" at 32k results on walking-breaks and a lower heart rate.

Sunday long run

25k in 2h 40min (avg pace 6:25/km) with avg HR 139. This is about the longest training run I will do in preparation for a marathon - I think. Some training programs advocate increasing the long-run distance up to 30k and above, but many others claim the risk of injury or overtraining increases dramatically when doing 3+ hour training runs and thus they are not worth the risk.

Drumsö Runt

19k long slow run around lauttasaari on Saturday. Since the shoreline of an island is supposed to have a fractal dimension greater than one, it's possible to lengthen the run by following the shoreline more closely. Here the lap around the island is about 16-3 = 13km.

Between 6-7km and slightly after 7km it's probably possible to run on the cliffs and in the woods to get a bit more distance. I'm not sure about the area around 10km, seems private with no path around the shoreline. At 12km and slightly after 14km I don't think there's a shoreline-path either.