Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Garmin take me away

It seems the Garmin 305 is pissed at me. Last night at a very brutal track workout she decided to go psycho on me. I have been having some concerns of an elevated heart rate lately, I say lately because until about 10 weeks ago I never paid attention to heart rate. Heck most of the time I would not wear my strap for the simple inconvenience of chaff on the boobies. I know body glide is my friend but I just did not see the point of applying it there or wearing a heart rate monitor. All this until I started training with my wonderful Coach who always trains by a heart rate monitor and stress it's importance. So once I programmed the Garmin and started to pay attention I found during all runs the Garmin states that I pretty much stay in zone 4-5. Not good! So when I finally mustered up enough nerve to talk to Coach K about it, she agreed this is not a good thing. So now the mission is to find what the issue is, is the Garmin/heart rate monitor reading correctly? Or WHAT? I am hoping it lies in the Garmin. After talking to coach Sunday afternoon we decided to run my track workout as normal and to try not get over 159 on my run Thursday night and then to report back. Well last night the Garmin "effen" went spastic, it started clicking and the screens were flashing, it would not stop and it took 20 mins for me to get it turned off. I was able to complete most of my workout before this crash 1 mile w/u 400/800/1200 CRASH 1600/1200. So here is what I am trying to get the Garmin up and running again changing the battery in the strap, re-uploading the new Garmin software and then resetting the device, if these do not work I will be sending it back for repair or replacement.

And for the heart rate problem, we are watching it closely and I will be borrowing a polar for this Thursday's workout from my surf sista Viv.

Hope to see you on the roads!

1 comment:

Mel-2nd Chances said...

I've followed my heart rate closely too, because I have a naturally high heart rate, and seem to always train in my zone 4. My Garmin heart rate monitor at one point was showing 255 bpm... lol, so when I opened up the battery compartment, the battery was completely corroded. I bought a Polar as well, which seems to be more accurate for the heart rate, but if you like the GPS feature of Garmin(which I love).. it's a separate unit that you put on your arm.... by the time I added my ipod, i started looking like Robocop! LOL Good luck with today's run!