Warning: This might offend some people…

But here it goes… I can't hold back any longer so I'm just going to go out and say it... You actually named your Garmin? They're a freakin' tool!!! You wouldn't name your wrench if you were working on your car would you?
No sir! My Garmin is just a fancy watch, and I call it "my Garmin"... Seriously, lay off the crazy! Sorry, but it’s just a pet peeve of mine…

And now that I got that off my chest let me tell you about the little man that lives in my Garmin...

See there's this little man who lives in my Garmin. His name is Pepito. His Mother was a Tarahumara Indian and his father was a member of the Kenyan Kipsigis tribe. He used to train in the high altitude conditions of Mexico City but then he signed a contract with Garmin and now he lives inside my watch and serves as my "Virtual Training Partner"...

Mostly, I like training alone, so I don’t normally run with Pepito but every once in a while, during a time trial or tempo run, I’ll invite Pepito along because Pepito is an excellent pacer... In fact Pepito is such a good pacer that he can keep an exact pace over any distance and for any length of time… you just tell him what pace you want and how far your going and he’ll do the rest!!!
Now you’d think that with a skill like this Pepito would make an excellent training partner… and for the most part you’d be right, except for one thing: Pepito is super competitive! In fact, Pepito is so competitive that you could almost consider it a character flaw… and it actually presents quite a problem and here’s why… let’s take the other week for example:

Pepito and I set out for a nice half-marathon paced 5 mile tempo run… for me that was supposed to be 5 miles at a 7:15 pace. But before we start Pepito goes and start running his mouth, talking about “You can’t keep a 7:15 pace for 5 miles!!!”, “You'll start too slow and then you'll never be able to catch up!!!”, and “I’ma Gonna win!!!” (in a Wario voice)… He kept harassing me and goading me and egging me on until I got so worked up that when the run finally started I took off way too fast and found myself way ahead of Pepito… And then once I was ahead I knew I had two choices… I could either slow down and give Pepito a chance to catch me and embarrass me or I could keep pushing the pace until Pepito was so far behind that he’d never stand a chance of keeping up…

I chose the 2nd of course and wound up finishing the 5 miles at a 6:55 pace. It was great at first as I reveled in my victory but later on I realized that all of Pepito’s competitive shit talking had caused me to totally blow my tempo pace… very poor training indeed!!! 

See: here's a picture of us doing battle...


So now I’m stuck with a conundrum: do I continue to train with Pepito even through every time we train he tricks me into running too fast? maybe I should tell Pepito a slower pace than I actually intend to run so that the joke is on him? Or do I just man up, ignore Pepito’s constant harassment and self doubt inducing remarks and just stick with him as he paces me?... 

I just don't know... Has anyone had any similar experiences with their virtual partner? What would you do?