RIP Garmin Data

Once upon a time, I bought a Garmin. April 2009 to be exact. A reward for a hard fought 5k PR. I've loved each and every minute of running with my Garmin, and enjoy pouring over the data after runs and races. I love my Garmin so much that after my first one died, followed by my second refurbished one died, I purchased yet another one.

So over the past 8 years I have ran with 3 different Garmin, accumulating all the data along the way. Some time last fall, my computer stopped syncing with my Garmin. It wasn't a huge deal, as I knew I was in the market for a new MacBook in the early spring. I finally broke down and purchased a new MacBook a few weeks ago, and was SO EXCITED to upload my data, especially to look at the last few half marathons I had done and do some comparisons, as you do when you're a crazy type A data lover.

For some reason, my login was no longer valid. I think during the point where my MacBook stopped working, Garmin switched from a username to an email address. It was the weekend, so I sent off an email to their support team. They'd always been INCREDIBLY helpful when I've had issues in the past, so yay! Let's get this puppy fixed!

In the meantime, I created a new account just to make sure that I could get the data off of my watch. Perhaps the accounts could be merged once things were fixed, or maybe not, I'd just re-upload. Whatever. I finally received an email back about my issue about a day and a half later and the guy reset my password so I could get in and update my information. At which point, I realized that the email I wanted was on the newly created account and not the old one, so I sent off another email asking if the newly created account could be deleted out.

Big mistake.

After another hour of fiddling around with it, I realized I could change the email on the one, freeing up the other, so that I took care of it on my own! I sent off another email replied to the original saying, I took care of it, please disregard the deletion request, thanks for all of your help yadda yadda yadda.

You see where this is going, right?

The next day I worked just 3 short hours because it was my weekend to work, so I have a weird week schedule. I get home and see an email saying, "your account has been successfully deleted!" Shit. Shit. Shit. Since I'm finally dealing with this issue during regular business hours, I call Garmin, where the guy assures me that accounts can't be deleted and my files are somewhere, so I chill out a bit. At which point I have a massage ready to start, so I have to leave him to track down thousands and thousands of miles of data.

And when I get out of my massage, I have a message: Yeah, I don't know how this happened, but all of your data is really deleted. Feel free to create another account here.

EFFFFFFFFFFFF.

On the plus side, I have my mileage and running time logged on a separate long, so all is not lost, but since I run a lot of the same races from year to year, it's so advantageous to look back and compare previous ones, reminding myself where the elevation map doesn't appear to have an incline, there is one and it's ever so slight, but to remember not to freak out when it feels super hard. Ugh.

It's not the end of the world, but it sure is a bummer.

New Precious

On a long run with Jenn, she was telling me the tale of her garmin watch strap breaking a few days prior, and her quick fix to superglue it back together. Moments later, I realized I was horrifically overdressed for the run and asked if we could pause for a minute so I could shed some layers. I went to unlatch my garmin to remove it from over the top of my long sleeve, when the garmin strap snapped.

Mere minutes after Jenn's tale.

Later on our run, I gave a mini cheer to a solo runner chick who we had seen at two different spots of our oppositely ran out and back (does that make sense? I don't think so....) and Jenn commented that she loves when people cheer for her. I said that sometimes when I feel like I'm on the brink of death of a bonkfest long run, just a thumbs up will give me another mile's worth of fuel, so I like to do the same thing.

As this conversation ended, we rounded a corner, and an older gentleman started hooting and hollering for us asking how far we were going and telling us we were awesome.

I then asked for one million dollars to be waiting in my car for me when I finished my run.

I guess the third time wasn't the charm in this instance.

After I got home, I inspected my watch and realized that instead of the pin or the strap itself breaking (which is replaceable and fixable) it's actually the plastic part that holds this in place that snapped. Well, poop.

I had been planning on getting a new garmin when marathon training started in June as the battery on my 405 had some issues with long-long runs last fall in training, especially when it was overcast. I read roughly a trillion reviews and 20 page blog reviews and went with the 610.

Isn't she lovely????

Isn't she wonderful?

Isn't she precious??

This garmin is definitely a she, unlike my previous man-watch. My old garmin was named Garmin the Martian, but I rarely referred to it as such, but this one just looks like a Priscilla, right? And then when she's being sassy I can refer to her as Miss Priss. Obvs.

Priscilla, let's make some running magic.