Garmin Grief

I know my non-running readers will think this is a typo and that I meant to type "Gremlin Grief", and that perhaps I am experiencing some sort of Gremlin invasion like in that movie...

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or that perhaps I drive a Gremlin and, of course, am experiencing grief over that hideous and poorly-constructed vehicle... and they are puzzled as to how such an intelligent person as I could choose to drive such a crime against automotive nature.

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No.

It is not a typo.

A Garmin is a little GPS device that I strap to my wrist. It tells me how far I've run and for how long and how fast. It is supposed to be the answer to all my running problems. It is supposed to make me happier, sexier, faster, smarter...

Lies. All lies.

Don't get me wrong... it is a super nifty device, and it does about a billion things that I don't even know about. So far, I can turn it on and off, charge it, and recently I learned how to make it beep at me at every mile. It does tell me how long and how far I've been running. And it is supposed to give me accurate pace. That is a lot of valuable and helpful information. But for some reason, it always gets me tense and screwed up.

Well, not 'for some reason'... I know why.

All that info-sharing... I remember this from my rowing days. Sitting on the rowing machine with the little read-out staring me in the face... showing me my output... speed, elapsed time, distance covered, strokes per minute. Realizing where you were in the workout, knowing that you were not as fast as you should be, watching your stroke rate become erratic as you got tired or for some reason lost focus. But there were other days when those numbers in front of you were exciting and cause for smiles. We used to put electrical tape over the read-out so as to prevent emotional distraction from interfering with the workout.

One of the hardest things about my Garmin is that the pace seems super erratic. There is no way I jump from 11:14 to 8:48 to 9:44 all in about 50 yards distance while maintaining an even effort and gait. But this happens all the time. I really never can trust the pace part... which for me is the whole point. Pre-Garmin, I had no problem piecing together routes with Googlemaps, and I have a watch that works just fine. I really wanted something to help me keep track of my pace between the miles and made it so I didn't have to do lengthy mathematical calculations while running to keep track of how things were going.

On Tuesday I did speedwork. Please explain to me how running a quarter-mile (0.25 mile) in 1:57 is 7:55 pace. That is what skeevin', lyin', cheatin' Mr. Garmin tried to tell me. By my calculations, it is 7:48. Kind of important when I was shooting for 1:45. And more than a little frustrating.

Last night I did a 5-mile progression run. After the first two miles, I realized that Mr. Garmin was all over the pace-map like a cheap suit. My per-mile paces when the lap beeped were right on, but the in-between readings were bouncing all over the place. I forsook Mr. Garmin and went by feel for the next two miles. Paces were right on and there was no stress associated with seeing numbers significantly too fast and significantly too slow. I was toast at that point, mentally and physically, and backed off for my last mile. Listening to my body ;-)

I know my lesson here is to not rely on the Garmin. But since I even do my speedwork at home on my loops, having that on-going pacing feature would be super helpful.

Does anyone suffer from similar Garmin Grief? Does anyone know how to remedy this glitch?... I would need step-by-step, 'for dummies' directions.

Has anyone ever owned or even ridden in an AMC Gremlin for real? My dad had a Pinto, which is almost as bad but not nearly as ugly.

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