I want to write a blog post every time I train, but sometimes I won’t have much to say about my workout – sometimes they are just not that exciting. And tonight was one of those times – 9 miles in Richmond Park after work in the dark. So instead I thought I would tell you about the problem I have with my Garmin GPS watch.  And that is, that after being used in all sorts of whether over the last three or four years (I am not certain exactly how long I have had it), my watch that has measured thousands of miles for me is no longer 100% water resistant. Last Saturday I was in the rain for over four hours and the screen of my watch – a £200 (when I bought it ) Garmin Forerunner 310XT – became fogged up. It wasn’t too bad. I could read the numbers on the screen if I looked at it hard enough, but it is turns out that the watch is no longer water resistant and I am concerned as to whether it will survive the two six hour walks I have planned for this weekend if the weather is as bad as it is forecast to be. In addition, five days after it became fogged up the watch still has condensation inside the screen:

I have been leaving the watch in warm parts of the house in the hope that the condensation would evaporate, but I guess it doesn’t have anywhere to evaporate to – in theory it is water resistant meaning that water can’t get in to the watch, and therefore once in, it can’t get out!  Tonight I am planning on leaving the watch inside a plastic bag containing salt as a friend has suggested that that might somehow suck the water out of the watch, but failing that I need to consider replacing the watch before it fails altogether. I bought the watch because at the time it was the best that Garmin had available.  The battery lasted 20+ hours compared to the 4 hours that my previous Garmin battery was down to.  It is still a good watch and the last time I used it in an ultra-distance race the battery lasted 17 hours.  With the GPS functionality turned off it lasts much longer.

For a while now I have been wanting to buy the Garmin Forerunner 920XT as the battery life on this watch is 40 hours which will be necessary if I am going to use the GPS functionality when I race the 100 mile Thames Tow Path race and 145 mile Grand Union Canal races in May, but the 920XT costs £390 and until now I haven’t been able to justify that price when I already have a perfectly good watch. I will let you know what I decide to do once I have made a decision.