Tag: GPS watch

March 3, 2026 – There Are No Serviceable Parts

March 3, 2026 / / 0 Comments

While training for my half marathon ten years ago, my wife bought me this Garmin Forerunner 10 as a birthday present. As I have stated many times, it really wasn’t my goal to run a half marathon but I committed because it was something that she wanted to do. We could do it together. It couldn’t hurt my health any.

Garmin promised seven days of GPS on runtime and two or three weeks of regular operation. The way it worked is when you pushed the ‘go’ button, it would record a bunch of GPS coordinates as cookies. When you synced the watch, it would put those events into maps and then you would have your runs plotted. Those could be accessed when you log into the Garmin website.

I have to admit, I had no desire to be some sort of athlete. But, I did use the watch each time I ran. I would periodically check the maps to see if my pace was getting better. Honestly, the best part about the watch is that it would track your distance from the time the start button was pushed. That made training much easier because I could run halfway and then turn around to get my intended mileage.

The watch never lived up to it’s advertised runtime. When it was new, I could track one or two 5K length runs and it would be depleted after two days. It started getting to the point where it would die before the end of a half marathon with the GPS on and a full charge. By the time I did my actual race, the watch was unusable for tracking. I had to go back to the old fashioned way of timing my pace. It did work as a basic watch for about a week in between charges. So, that is how I used it.

You know how I hate to throw things away. I inquired about the ability to repair the watch. There are no serviceable parts. Where have I heard that before? My son’s e-Bike. The watch gathered dust form quite a few years until I looked up online and there are plenty of how-tos on how to do this. I never realized that there were rechargeable and non-rechargeable CR2032 batteries. The trick was that I did not want to order 10 of them, just one good one. That is what I did, I ordered one battery.

Why Garmin would say that there are no serviceable parts is beyond me. It actually looks pretty straight forward. You open the case, carefully disassemble the electronics and then swap the battery. It is assembled in the reverse order. This was a lake house project that I did. I took all of the stuff with me and I did it in the afternoon.

I plugged the watch in and it appeared to be charging. That is where I left things until the next day. When I took it off of the charger, all I got was a triangle, the sign that it is off and charging. Pressing the power button yielded not change. I did further research to say that it needed to be synched but I didn’t have my computer with me to do that. I tried to sync it when I got home and the watch was dead.

The battery indicator shows that it has a full charge but the watch does not function. The whole point of this was to see if I could sell it for $10 to some aspiring runner. I have to say that is certainly not going to be the case. I should probably spend some more time troubleshooting this watch. Now that I am home, I could certainly try some multimeter tests and another attempt to disassemble and re-assemble. But is it really worth it?

I have already moved on to a new model watch. I have also invested $6 for a new battery and time to do this battery swap, not to mention a $10 watch band replacement all in the name of keeping this watch out of the landfill. I also hate to be defeated and I cant simply admit that something so seemingly simple does not work.

End Your Programming Routine: It could be that I did not put this together correctly. It could also be that this thing has ran it’s course. I don’t really know the reason. My problem is that I have bigger fish to fry now. The time to wheel and deal cheap electronics has past. I have to get onto the business of moving to the new house. I haven’t fully conceded yet but maybe sometimes no serviceable parts actually means what the phrase implies.

January 13, 2026 – How Wearables Have Changed My Life

January 13, 2026 /

I am not a fan boy or gym rat or even a fitness fanatic. I am just a guy that looks at data and makes observations. I got this GPS watch to help with my training for my PCT hike and it has slowly made an impression on me. It is the kind of impression that puts conscious decisions to the forefront. Before I knew it, I was making health improving decisions that I didn’t even know were issues.

Years ago when I was leading a 24×7 tech support group, I found out about this feature that buzzed your wrist when the phone rang. As a pretty heavy sleeper, I was curious how that might affect my ability to catch some of the calls that I missed because I was sleeping and the ringer was not waking me up. Some of the guys in my group were wearing them and swearing that this was the difference maker when they were on call.

I shared this with my wife and she was interested too for different reasons. For her, my excuse of not hearing or feeling the phone ring while I was working around the house was coming to an end. She seems to have this incessant need to feel like she can get ahold of me at any moment. It is a feeling driven out of fear that I have fallen off the roof or something.

I downplayed the risks but when it came to tracking my training, I changed my tune. I looked at the top of the line and double the price watches but I decided that it wasn’t worth the price. I was not planning on using my watch to navigate and I didn’t need a color screen. I picked the Garmin Instinct Solar Tactical II. I am not sure what makes it tactical other than it is brown. It was the watch that fit the price and had the features that I wanted, particularly the run time.

This is actually my second Garmin watch. My first one was a much simpler watch called the Forerunner. I used it when I was training for my half marathon. I became battery sensitive because after two years, it wouldn’t run long enough to complete at two plus hour run. But, it was pretty cool because I could see a map of what I did plus pace. Battery life became the reason I quickly ruled out the Apple watch nearly immediately. I don’t want another thing that I have to charge everyday.

Yes, I do use it to track my hikes and walking. I look at steps and time for pace as well as distance. But what I really found is valuable is the other data it provides. When I sync my watch on the Garmin Connect application, the very first graphic it provides is a ‘body battery’ image. It takes the activity and rest for the day and comes up with some sort of point in time calculation of what my body battery value is. I have to say that when I feel run down, the body battery validates that either I did not get enough rest or I have been busier than I realized.

Another thing I look at is my sleep score. I typically only look at it when I feel like I slept poorly. But I have to say that I feel pretty validated about how I am feeling and the relative score that is presented. A general trend is that I start the week high and my battery declines as the week moves on. On some Fridays, my battery is a quarter of what it was Sunday morning.

A lot of the day is out of my control. But, there are occasions when it is a Wednesday and I am feeling low energy and I make the conscious decision to go to bet at 8:30 rather that trying to make it to 10pm. This is particularly true when it has been a hard weekend without a lot of rest. Looking at the data is changing my behaviors. I am making decisions to act on the data in the interest of feeling better tomorrow.

I have had a scientific interest in the data as well. I have observed that on days where there is a fair amount of drinking that my sleep is garbage. It didn’t matter if I slept 10 hours on New Years Eve, the result was that it was of poor quality and my body battery started off significantly lower than where it should have been. I have used the data to decline that second drink.

I have to say that the solar component does almost nothing that I can see. I have yet to see an increase in the battery life on a sunny day. But, supposedly after a full charge, there is 40 days of GPS free operation. I have yet to see the battery get low because I charge it when I take a shower. The watch will gain four days in thirty minutes.

I can also say that I only feel the ringer function about 2/3 of the time. I often find when I am being very active, it is very noisy or some amount of vibration I often do not feel the ring. Maybe it is just my choice in wearable, I don’t know but I thought that I would share that this may not be a panacea if you are looking for that function specifically.

End Your Programming Routine: This body battery function is one of the unknown gems of a wearable. I always knew that I felt run down as the week moves on but now I have proof. And because I can conduct empirical experiments, I can actively do things so that I feel better tomorrow. I don’t believe that it is all mental, because I usually check to validate my feeling and not look before I decide.