Aldi Crane GPS watch with heart rate monitor

After hearing a positive review from a friend, I recently picked up this little item for $99 from my local Aldi. As far as I’m aware, the watch hasn’t been advertised since July, but there were a few in stock in my local store.

WK27_PDnew_044a

Key benefits:

  • Two year warranty
  • Really easy to use
  • Does all the stuff you want from a GPS / sport training watch / heart rate monitor
  • Export data as GPX for upload to Strava
  • Comes with a bicycle mount (have not tried this yet)
  • Cheap!
  • No longer any need to take my phone on runs to make use of GPS

Running stats and facts

Personal bests

DistanceTimeYearEvent
42.2km3:25:012021Melbourne Marathon
21km90:312016Mt Beauty 1/2 Marathon
14km55:552006City to Surf
11km43:022005Sutherland to Surf
10km39:022006Corporate Games
8km31:282006Mothers Day Classic
5km18:2820212 Sept 2021
3.2km12:062021Virtual Pharlap
3km11:102006Sydney Water Run

Annual totals

2022

2021: 3,035km

2020: 2,792km

2019: 1,288km

and 30 he now is

30!
Cade has been waiting to turn 30 for a few years now, and it finally arrived over the weekend. He celebrated over pretty much the whole weekend, with a dinner out on saturday night, a 30km run on sunday morning to celebrate the 30ishness and then cake and presents on sunday afternoon.
Tally & Moo waiting for the birthday boy
We placed a marathon type of ribbon across the finish line of the 30km run.
Cade running home
Cade finishing the 30km run at 8:30am
Moo, Cade & Tally having birthday cake
Birthday cake time!
Tally, Cade, Alice & Maisie
Present time!
For the record, I ran 30km in 2hrs and 35mins
-Cade.

Lake to Lagoon 2008 course

UPDATE: Placed 15th in a time of 37:21mins.
Hopefully I will get a chance sometime this week to go for a jog along the course to remind myself of all the ups and downs.

For the record, I placed 14th last year with a time of 36:55mins. But I honestly don’t expect to perform anything like that this year.

Won a 10km race on the weekend

As previously mentioned, I entered the 10km version of the Wagga Wagga Trail Marathon on the weekend.
Much to my surprise the field was very small (probably only 30 runners) and not very competitive.
Subsequently I finished first, by at least 1 minute I reckon. Not sure of the actual time yet, but apparently I finished the run somewhere in the 46 minute range. Given the cold conditions (I almost lost feeling in my hands for a little while), and the 10 styles we had to climb over, I thought that was a reasonable time, although a good 7 minutes slower than my quickest time for a 10km. However now it appears that the 10km distance was actually more like 11km. Not surprisingly, this is a very, very pleasant surprise. I don’t feel quite so awkward about my ‘victory’ now.

I just ran 9.4km in 42 minutes

That works out at basically 4:30min per km over a flat and easy course. For a training run, I am happy with that. It indicates to me that I have returned to a reasonable base fitness. From here, over the next few months, I need to start doing a few things:

  • A tough weekly interval/fartlek session
  • A weekly/fortnightly long run building from 10km up to about 25km
  • Compete in a few running events such as the 10km fun run as part of the Wagga Wagga Trail Marathon and the Lake to Lagoon
  • Regularly (but not every week) attend Wagga Road Runners
  • Continue to do plenty of cross training (bike riding) and at least 60mins every day of stretches/core strength work

My 29th birthday…

…is now done and dusted and I am officially in the last 12 months of the last year of my youth.
Here are some highlights of how I spent my birthday weekend (Saturday’s are easily the best day to have a birthday as it’s so easy to justify spreading the celebrations over the entire weekend).
Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Lake to Lagoon

Update: Placed 14th.
A great event. I ran well enough, just under 37mins. I’ll find out my place later in the week, but definitely top-20, out of 1300 or so runners. My cheer squad did a good job of encouraging me towards the end. I still can’t believe it’s a free event. Found myself in a couple of the group photos in the local paper. And it was good to run against some familiar faces from the Wagga Road Runners.