Last night, I had to perform the rather bizarre Factory Reset on my Garmin Forerunner 310xt in a final attempt to rescue it from whatever demons have been possessing it in the last few months.

My Garmin and I have been ‘on a break’ for a while, as modern relationship lingo would have it.  It hasn’t been switching on for the last month or so andbefore that it transferred plenty of 0 byte files on any occasion that I tried to transfer any meaningful data!

Then I had the flu.

Then I had exams.

Then I became lazy.

Then I decided to go to the gym because it was ‘easier’

Then I procrastinated

Then I finally ran out of excuses and ran out of the door for a ‘quick’ 5 miles.

The factory reset is rather fiddly, you have to press several buttons in a particular order for a set duration of time.  A minute or so later and it was done.  Then came for the interesting bit.  I had to re-input all of my personal information.  Relatively little has changed since I first bought the Garmin nearly 2 years ago BUT this time I asked somebody else to measure my height.  The result – I’m 2 inches taller than I thought I was.  Not a lot, but it’s a psychological boost for a short person!  I’m 5ft 5′, not 5ft 3′.  Hurrah!

The downside to measuring my height and weight again is that I’m 9st 2lbs, not 9st but that’ll rectify itself in time.

I just hope that my temperamental Garmin doesn’t develop another glitch.  I don’t get the same buzz from running if I don’t know how far I’ve gone or how much chocolate I’ve justified eating, no SERIOUSLY!  Measuring routes out before hand or trying to remember which roads and streets I’ve winded down is pretty difficult.  I hate running down straight roads, it’s just too boring.  I prefer to weave in and out at will and let the Garmin do the tracking.  That’s a particularly useful feature of the Garmin when I go for a run around the park like I did this week; no matter what combination of paths you take you know, to a fairly accurate degree, how far you have run.

Update:  The factory reset seemed to do the trick today.  Went out for a 5k and ended up doing a touch more, got home and uploaded the data within seconds.  Just how it should be.

Now, let’s hope it lasts!