New toy (Garmin 305)

Hooray for the Postie!
He came bearing gifts yesterday at lunch time!
Well it was a self administered gift as it is my birthday next week and I decided to finally treat myself.

I bought a Garmin 305 heart rate and GPS thingummy.
It is a watch based GPS for sports.

It took me 3 hours to charge it from scratch which meant I had to be patient but I managed not to fiddle with it until it was charged.
I inputted my profile which asks for date of birth and gender and I think weight.

Yesterday evening I gave it ,it's first outing.
We ran the river run (2.96miles)
The heart rate strap goes round your chest after you wet the contacts and the watch obviously straps on your wrist.
I was a bit worried about it slewing around as my wrist is only 6 inches round but the strap is a sort of nylon and quite easy to get the right length to keep it steady. The weight is surprisingly light, you really don't notice it. I think it is less noticeable than my usual metal ladies sized wrist watch.

After about 1 minute waiting for it to find the satellites, I then pressed the 'start ' button ,we were off.

Now I don't know if it is a mental thing ,but my pace felt very strong for a change and I strode along the route quite quickly for me.
When we went under the bridges, I could hear the watch beep a little tiny bit which I think was its signal for losing and re-finding the satellites. Understandable under a bridge.

We had to avoid a dog about halfway into the run ,the owner sat quite happily on the bench with another dog on a lead and laughed as the untethered dog chased my feet,me looking at it as I skipped out of its reach, I really like dogs but not when they might be about to snap my ankles ,so we took a detour around the Church to avoid meeting the same animal on the way back.

Once home,I pressed the 'start' button again as it also doubles as the 'stop' button. Simples!
Then after grabbing a cup of water and a banana,I went upstairs and plugged the garmin into my laptop.
It has a cradle so you can connect it to the usb and upload/download stuff + charge it up.
The garmin prog opened and let me upload my run.
It was very exciting to see it appear instantly in the program with a little map,my pace and calories and time all ready laid out in a chart.
I exported the file as tcx format and then opened mapmyrun and imported it to there to see how the map would look alongside my painstaking versions .It was fine and added in the pace and time and date all by itself.

Next I will learn how to use it with the options for timing and distance .
Then I will see how it works with my virtual gym program as that can also use a HRM to integrate with the workouts.