I ran 4.12 miles today.  Not bad, but no where near what I was doing before I had the lung problem.  I was actually up to 17 mile runs before all hell broke loose.

My task this winter is to get back in shape and get to the point where I can run really long distances.  My marathon plans fizzled this year but I’m bound and determined that I’ll complete a marathon next year.

To aid in achieving my running goals, I just purchased a Petzl E 93 PT Tikka 2 Headlamp.

By the time I get out of work, the sun has already gone down and while it’s not too cold out, it would be nice to be able to get in a run at the end of the day.  I have a reflective vest that works really well but last year I found that although drivers could see me, I couldn’t really see the road on which I was running.  I don’t want to take a chance of twisting an ankle or taking a bad fall, so I’m hoping the headlamp will do the trick.

I suspect I’ll have a bit of a problem getting used to it at first.  I’ve never liked wearing hats and I’m not sure that wearing a headband with a lamp attached to it will be any better.  I’ll just have to adjust.

A minor annoyance with Visual Studio, is that it doesn’t allow you to include conditional references to Debug and Release versions of class libraries.  For example, if you have a project and you add a reference to a class library by right-clicking on the ‘Reference’ folder and selecting the ‘Add Reference…’ menu item, the version of the library that you choose, be it Debug or Release, will always be used regardless of whether you choose to build a Debug or Release version of your project.

There is a way around this.  First, add your reference to the class library using Visual Studio as you normally would.  Next, close your project and open your project file (*.csproj) using the source code editor.  Find the location of the reference you just added and replace the ‘Debug’ or ‘Release’ portion of the string with ‘$(Configuration)’.

Code after the break…

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I like old people.  I really do.  In fact, I hope to be one of them some day.  I just wish they had some consideration for those of us that work for a living.  For example,  I’m at a medical lab this morning needing to get a blood test, and the waiting area is filled with old people who I suspect have little else on their schedule today.  It sure would be nice if they waited until the morning rush was over before coming in for their tests.  It would really make life easier for the rest of us.

Here’s my update for the last post about the Garmin 610…

Since the last review, I spoke with a women at Garmin support (based in the USA!) and she was very helpful. She agreed the GPS had a problem, and was willing to replace it, but they did not currently have any in stock. She suggested that I talk to the retailer to see if they could do an immediate replacement. I then contacted Clever Training, the Amazon merchant, by email and they said they would send me a replacement upon receiving the defective item. I packaged it up, sent it off and in about a week received the new 610.

I initially had problems setting up the new 610. The software required a firmware update, but the Garmin Ant agent software wouldn’t recognize it. I believe this was because I had previously activated the other 610 on the computer. I tried deleting the old profile, re-installing the software, etc but no-go. I finally gave up and had to use another computer to do the firmware update. There is obviously a bug in the Garmin software which they hopefully will fix in a future release.

For the most part the watch works well. There have been a few minor glitches. I once saw the display reset and start counting from zero after I had completed a mile, but scrolling through the …

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This is a copy of a review I just posted on Amazon for the Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS Watch.

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I purchased this GPS watch about a week ago.  When I first received it, I put it in the charging cradle and charged it to 100%.  Everything was fine.  I ran with it a few days, then upgraded the firmware to the new 2.4 release.  The next time I attempted to charge the unit, instead of charging, it began to discharge with the percent charge number going down until the unit was fully discharged.

I checked the Garmin forums to see if there was a fix for this and found that there are a whole bunch of people dealing with this issue.  A Garmin rep posted in late June that they were aware of the problem and were looking into it, but there have been no additional postings about it since then.

I attempted a few other things on my own to try to fix this.  I did a hard reset.  No go.  I also attempted to charge the unit through the computers USB port.  Again no go.

I’ve contacted Garmin support this morning (Sunday) and hope that I will get a response tomorrow.

If you’re considering purchasing one of these, I suggest you check the Garmin forums first to see if this issue has been resolved, otherwise you’re taking you’re chances.

I’ll …

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