October Runfessions- Garmin Edition
Ack! How is October almost over? This time of year goes so fast. I’m excited for November, but sad that two months of Pumpkin Palooza are almost gone. Thanks as always to Marcia for opening up her runfessional… this month I have some Garmin-fessions to share. Let’s get right into it! My Garmin and I have been having issues lately. You might remember a couple weeks ago when it suddenly informed me that I was stressed out and should consider breathing exercises (mind your own business!) Well, there have been more incidents since then. A few nights ago I was awakened by a buzzing on my wrist. I checked my Garmin and it was time to run! WHAT??? Somehow, I had hit the “run” button, the Garmin picked up the GPS signal (?) and then I hit it again to start the run. Was I dreaming about going for a run??? Needless to say, I was a little groggy- it took me a couple moments to stop the activity, which had me moving at 0 miles per hour, and then discard it. The whole thing was very confusing in the middle of the night, as you can imagine. I wear my Garmin at night because it’s my alarm, but now I’m rethinking that. Then there was yesterday. I was just finishing a run, and as my Garmin beeped for 4 miles I stopped and saved the activity. When I went back to check, I was informed that I had run 3.99 miles. WHAT. How in the world…??? Who wants to run 3.99 miles? I protest! HRUMPH. I wrote it down as “4” in my log. Meanwhile, my husband recently got the same Garmin I have (the Forerunner 55.) He told me that if he needs to, he can hit the “assistance” button and I’ll get a text notification that he needs help. Cool! Wait, why doesn’t my Garmin do that? Oh… it does. I just never set it up, but with the help of my husband, I now have that feature as well. When I asked my husband how he figured that out, he said “I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.” Oh… those. There’s a small possibility that some of the snafus I’ve had with this watch are due to the fact that I never read the instructions. I just messed around with it until I knew how to make it do the basic things I wanted- wake me up in the morning and function as a GPS watch for my runs. Then a few weeks ago I messed around with it some more until I figured out how to set the run/walk intervals. Now I have the nagging feeling that I own an expensive watch and am taking advantage of about 1/10th of the things it has to offer. Well… I still own the instructions. One of these days I might read them- you never know! If you have a Garmin, do you use most of the features? Are there features on your Garmin you DON’T like? – Yes, I don’t like being told that I’m under too much stress.