New Toy

In my previous post, I mentioned a nice 12 mile run along the Minnesota River. I enjoyed the run immensely while looking at the clear blue sky, the now-leafless trees, and the various birds that frequent the Minnesota River Valley.

What I didn't enjoy was my Garmin 205 dying again. It had decided that holding a charge was a little too much work for it. On some runs it would hang on for a couple hours, and others less. It died at mile 25 of the Rock 'n Roll Saint Louis Marathon, which wouldn't have been a huge deal had Competitor Events known how to work an electronic timing system. 

It then died during my birthday run, which was a little more irksome as I'm not sure how many kilometers past mile goal of 31 I ran.

Since then I'd been researching my options for replacing the 205. I looked into sending it to Garmin to get it refurbished, but $70 seemed a little step. I then looked into replacing the battery myself, but that looked unlikely to end in success and more likely to end in me cutting my finger, burning myself with a soldering iron, or gluing my finger to casing (see video).

Short story long, I went to REI on Saturday and bought a Garmin 210. It's pretty sweet. This one came with a heart rate monitor, which I haven't used since I had my first GPS watch. I won't write a long gear review about it because I've got enough readers who couldn't care less.

What I will say, however, is that when I was at REI, the nice gentleman selling me the watch said, "I think GPS watches are nice because they really get people running more." I do like setting goals and all that, and the GPS watches definitely make it easier to track progress.

Plus, I've been doing some classes at the YMCA, and now I have a way to load them on my training log with the heart rate information. Isn't technology great?

Happy Running!