Running with the Jedi

The last day or so has been really fun. On Sunday I got my Garmin Forerunner 201 and got to play with it on Monday. In keeping with the consumerist theme I also got Star Wars – Knights of the old Republic, a USB key chain hard drive, and a DVD burner for good measure. Monday was spent buzzing about at work taking care of things before I got to go home and play with my toys.

The Forerunner is great. I took it for my first run last night and enjoyed being able to tell just how far I had run. Somehow it makes exercise easier if I can quantify it. Once I got home I was able to hook it up to my computer and see all sorts of graphs about my performance. It will be interesting to see how as I get in shape I’ll run more (and faster), and walk less on my little outings. I’m at about 1.5 miles every other day right now with my run/walk routine, and my goal is to within a month have 2 miles every other day of straight running.

After the run I sat down and got into KOTOR. It’s a fun little game, and quite addictive. I found myself drawn into it, and more than 4 hours later I managed to put it down. My friend Ian came by after he got done at WinHEC to check out the game (he’s the one that turned me onto it in the first place) and browse around the net as our alter ego. A mutual acquaintance of ours named Jeremy came by for a while, but other than that is was a video-game centric evening.

So here I sit at lunch eating my veggie burrito and waiting for 5:30 to roll around so I can go run and play KOTOR. I’m surprised at how into the whole exercise thing I’m getting now that I’m actually doing it. I find myself looking forward to it almost every day. There is a part of me that wants to start running every day, but I’m worried that I’ll get burnt out if I start that too soon.