Garmin Forerunner Troubles

My awesome dad gave me a really great present for Christmas that I was really, really excited to get: A Garmin Forerunner! This handy dandy watch tracks your heart rate, your speed, your mileage, calorie burn and lots of other goodies. (Calorie burn is much more accurate since it monitors your heart rate too.)

I was super excited to try it out and it was torture waiting until Christmas to open it since I already knew what I was getting.

I went on my first run at my mom's and was super bummed because I didn't know how to start it correctly, and I basically missed the first almost half mile of my run, which I ran really well. Bummer.

But since I've been home I've been really disappointed using it. There seems to be an almost 1/4 mile different between the app I used on my iPhone (Map My Hike) and the watch. This meant that all of those great runs I had been doing were actually not accurate- I wasn't really running a mile (I was running .75 of a mile) and that 11:54 minute run I had done last week didn't really happen.

Hence why I haven't written about my fabulous watch. Basically it broke my little heart with it's nasty tales of 17 minute miles. (Insert "Ugly Cry Face" here)

I have been sort of dreading my runs ever since and have been going only every other day. Not that that's not great, I just sort of lost  heart thinking I was doing so badly. Also I just felt like I was running so long, and how could it be longer for a mile? My timed run at my moms seemed mostly consistent with what I had been running, so I was pretty confused as to why that time was fine and the ones since have sucked.

I remembered on another blog she had mentioned that her watch needed to be calibrated, and with hope I wondered if perhaps my watch was off, and not the phone. I googled and googled and didn't really find anything. I couldn't find that post from the other gal's blog and just felt stumped.

So I logged into my data tracker for the Garmin and started looking at things.

This is the map I got from my Garmin.

Um... that's not right.

This is my map of my run from my phone app. (I'm still running both simultaneously because the phone announces my time of each mile and my collective time audibly, and I've also been using the app for almost a year so it's keeping a running tally- basically I'm emotionally attached and can't give it up. You know, normal stuff.)

Um, those don't match.

And I know where I walked, obviously I know my own street.  This is how the Garmin should have looked:

I started my walk where the star is. The blue line is where I ran. I'm pretty confused to say the least. The only reason I noticed this was because one of the other maps I looked at showed the same thing and I just thought it was a fluke. (I also usually follow the street around the corner (straight up 49th), but today I had to cut in because there was a loose dog.

Looking at that weird map, it's also puzzling to me because the Garmin line, to me, looks longer than my actual walk, but it's registering as shorter. Suffice to say, I'm pretty sure it's the Garmin that's wrong and not my phone. Also, it's randomly registering 1 and 3 minute mile paces on the route. As in, "Your fastest pace was 1:15 minute mile!!" Usually this seems to be where I stopped the watch while the dog peed, and while I tried to re start it standing in the same spot, I must not be. I just think it's very strange.

I don't think this watch itself is broken or needs to be returned, but it does probably need some adjustment in my behavior. Maybe I should turn it on and search for satellites while standing across the street or something. It's obviously having trouble finding me at my starting point. It obviously has me okay on the way back, but not when I start.

Any other suggestions?

Garmin left, phone app right

Those are so wildly different, I had no idea what my pace is. And, there's  not even proportional differences. (Look at mile 2 for each compared with mile one).  Interestingly, since I ran the phone app the whole time (no pauses/stops for dog peeing) it recorded over a minute of extra time  beyond what the Garmin did, and still gave me faster splits. (Yes I know I run super wild positive splits, but the first mile and the last mile are my only flat terrain, and I usually walk the last bit home)

Also I gained three pounds this week. I'm not really sure how that happened, but I was not very happy this morning.