

Sep 13, 2012

Garmin Frustration

10 miles on the schedule.  10 miles done.  THANK GOD!  Holy crap I really hate 10 miles before work.  I've only got two more of those in my schedule until the marathon and I'm happy about that.


You ever get frustrated with your Garmin.  I have the 310xt.  I like it overall but sometimes it can be a royal pain in know.  I get outside, turn it on and wait.  Not that it does not load fast because it does not really take that long.  My frustration is that the thing doesn't always position me where I really am.  Take a look at this map here:

According to this I ran 0.07 miles at a 18:53 average pace and my best pace was 6:45 per mile.

The only issue.....I'm standing still on my driveway and you can't even see my street on this map.  Of course, I knew this before I ever started because I was looking at the pace as it was changing while I'm standing still.  This has happened a few times in the last couple weeks and happened occasionally before that.  Sometimes I run a mile(and I know exactly where a mile is) and it goes off before indicating I ran a 7 minute pace - crap!  I then add more time on my run to be sure I hit my goal.

I basically have to press start and wait about a minute while the satellite finds where I really am before I start running.  Then I reset the GPS and start and my runs are calculated correctly.  It works but it's an extra step and at 4:30am, it's not something I'm in the mood for either.  Ha!

I tried wiping out all the data on the watch, resetting it, etc. but it just did this again this morning.  I hate to think it's time for a new GPS already.  I've only had the unit about 2.5 years.  I certainly think I should get more than that out of it especially for what this model costs.

Last season I almost purchased a Timex GPS but I use Daily Mile to track everything and it will not sync to DM.  I asked DM about it and they suggested I write code to allow it to transfer.  Oh.....ok.

Anyone else ever experience this?  Maybe it's time to go back to my trusty $20 Timex Ironman watch and run based on time but I'm a numbers guy and love keeping track of miles.



  1. LOL, welcome to my world. Since my Garmin died, I've been using my $20 Timex and haven't really fallen off the mileage tracking. Since the Olympics aren't until 2016, my mileage isn't as important now......

  2. I've found that if you let the Garmin find the satellites by placing it flat on an outdoor surface, it works much better than having it on your wrist. My Garmin recently hass started displaying a low battery warning at random times for no good reason. Frustrating.

  3. Yes. My 2.5 year old garmin started doing this recently as well. My work around is to get dressed take watch outside to find the satellites while I come back in the house to get water and do final few things. It just seems to take longer to get settled in these days. Frustrating though but I'm trying to hold on as long as I can before I have to buy a new one.

  4. MY GARMING DRIVES ME NUTS!!!! I am thankful for my timex expedition. It has slightly more laps than the timex ironman. I live rather out on the middle of no where, and my garmin really likes to not turn on, require a hard reset, and then instantly go to no battery life on race day. Um, super fun, especially when it happens the morning of BOSTON!!! (thankfully I was prepared and had a backup garmin to borrow) or Muncie 70.3/37.2, and I didn't' have a back up, and burned myself up on the bike course and was toasted for the run. Not entirely the garmin's fault, but I can bet that if I looked down and knew I was going over 20mph for most of the bike, I would have backed off a bit. I have had mine for longer than you have had yours. I don't remember when I got it, but I am thinking 2009? I had to use two different garmins for the IM, since I knew I didn't have the battery life in my garmin to make it through my slow bike and then my run. I used my timex to worry about time of day, because the course cut offs were all based on time of day, and felt it was important to know where I stood. Lots of people were asking, "what time is it?" on the course, and I was glad I knew.

  5. My Garmin has also started to give me problems, it was a wet winter and he doesn't like the rain (the old 205) but he sun is out so maybe he'll do fine for the next 6 months, but the question is what next, what do I get???