RIP Garmin

My Garmin 305 running watch died last week. I was pretty upset that it was no longer in working order. I had my 305 for almost 4 years and we had run lots of miles together. It got my through my first marathon when I got my BQ, numerous 1/2 marathons, training runs that were awesome and some not so awesome, through the 2010 Boston Marathon, and more recently it saw me running some of the fastest times I have ever run before.

My parents bought me the 305 for Christmas when I first started to get back into serious running after college. It was one of the best and most practical gifts I have received. At this point, I don't know how I have ever trained without a Garmin. When I first realized my watch wasn't working on Friday, I freaked! I had a 5 mi tempo run to complete that morning and I literally had a melt down- how was I to know my pace or where my mile markers were at???!!!

To back track, my 305 was fine on Sunday when I ran the Newman Lake 25K. It was also fine on Monday when I went for a 3.25 mile run down to SAC for bootcamp and went for a 2 mile "wog" with Cam. On Thursday after work Cam and I went to Greenbluff to "wog" the 4 mile Cherry Pickers Trot and I realized then that my 305 was dead. I thought maybe I had left it on after our "wog" on Monday so I didn't think much of it until we got home. I plugged it into the charger and nothing happened. I waited for an hour and nothing happened. I waited over night because I wanted to run my 5 mile tempo before work and nothing. It was dead (you can insert my meltdown here).

I took the watch with me to work and started to make frantic phone calls. I remembered that my mom had purchased the watch for me at Costco. Luckily, Costco has a fabulous return policy. I was able to call our local warehouse with her Costco card number and have them print her receipt so that I could return my 305. You can probably guess where I went when I got off from work....Costco! After returning my 305 I went straight to REI and purchased the new Garmin 210. I had been researching watches all day and making my list of pros & cons between the Garmin 110, 210 and the new Nike Sportwatch, I knew that the 210 would be just the right purchase.

On Sunday I took my 210 out for a 7 mile spin. I was amazed at how user friendly it was and how much easier it was to read both my pace and distance while running. It sat much more comfortable on my freakishly small wrists too (it no longer looks like my watch weighs more than me Angie). When I got home I uploaded the Garmin training log to my computer and plugged in the watch to download my run. It instantly downloaded my run into my online training log. It showed the elevation of my run, my mile splits, my calories burned, what my fastest pace was during the 7 miles, and my route. You can make each workout private or public and you can edit each run individually. By showing my workout as public I can email Amy my workouts instead of typing them out for her. I can also print a monthly calendar that includes my runs with weekly mileage.

You can check out my very first run recorded by my new 210 here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/101559563#.Ti4qB5W0DMQ.gmail

I miss my 305 because we had covered a lot of asphalt together, but I am looking forward to seeing where my 210 takes me. I have high aspirations that my new 210 will get me back to Boston for 2013. :-)

--Tasha