When should you hit “Stop” on your Garmin?

Intersection!  

Hit the stop button!  

Gu break!  

Hit the stop button!  

Need a sip of water!  

Hit the stop button!

That’s fine, because you’re trying to measure the speed and distance you’re actually RUNNING, right?

It depends what you’re trying to measure.  After many months of trying to figure out how to get the best information from my Garmin, here are some things I’ve decided.

Long Runs: It’s helpful to know what pace you’re running when you’re actually running, but hurtful to think that you can make it 10 miles in a shorter amount of time than you’re capable because you’re actually taking breaks.  If you’re stopping to take a Gu, or a quick walking break, your heart rate is descending, your legs are resting, your body is benefiting from that break.  You can’t expect to magically remove all those breaks during a race and still maintain the same pace you run when your watch is going.

Solution?  I hit the lap button for walking breaks or Gu breaks.  I wait until the Garmin beeps for another mile so I’m in a fresh lap, and then I take the 30-90 seconds I need, and I hit the lap button before I keep going.  That way I have information about how fast I’m covering miles when I’m actively moving, AND what my overall pace would be when I account for the breaks I take.  It’s also incentive to limit the amount of time I spend walking – now every second counts, and they add up faster than you think!

Interval Runs: Stop the clock in between intervals UNLESS you’re using your Garmin to time a specific recovery period.  And unless you’re using the Garmin to pace yourself during your warm up and cool down, you can probably skip using it then, too.  Do you really need to log those miles that you’re jogging to and from the track?  I’m not sure I do, since I don’t track my annual mileage.  If you do, then by all means.  Otherwise, consider just starting the clock and using the Garmin as a tool to meet your intervals, then stopping it during the recovery so the only data you have to look at when you get home is the data that matters – each interval.

Tempo Runs: Same as long runs – if you’re going to stop for a drink, it might benefit you to know you’re doing it by hitting the lap button so you can see the break but also have a gauge on what your active moving pace is.

I’ve struggled with using the Garmin a lot.  I remember being shocked when I ran my first 10k at 10:45 minute pace.  I’d been running with my Garmin at 9:45 pace and hitting “stop” every mile or so to take a break (which probably lasted 90 seconds or so) and then continue.  I shouldn’t have been surprised at all, but I was… because I’d been lying to my Garmin, and that led me to unrealistic expectations of my own performance.

I wish I had a magic formula to tell you how many water break or intersection stop minutes you can subtract for race day by virtue of race day adrenaline – but I don’t.  What I do know is that hitting the lap button instead of the stop button has kept me aware and accountable of the number of stops and how long they are.  Yes, it stings to hit that lap button when I’m stopped at a busy intersection and it’s not by choice… but my recovering heart rate doesn’t know the difference, and I want to have the most accurate idea of how long it’ll take me to get from point A to point B.

Any of this sound familiar?  It should.  I was fighting with the stop button over a year ago, when I wrote a blog post titled “Goal: Stop Lying to my Garmin“.  Some things never change!  But hey – I’m getting better.  😉