I’ve been running with a Garmin since 2005. I started with the Forerunner 201, and upgraded to the 205 last year. I love it and never run without it!

When I was a newbie user, though, I didn’t bother to read the manual. I was so happy to be tracking my speed and distance that it took me a few months before I realized it could also give me split times.

Now it’s one of my favorite features!

I’ve helped friends both in real life and through Twitter get their Garmins set up, and just last night a reader send me a question about mile splits. It’s easy!

That’s all!

Of course if you want your splits sooner or later, you can do that. I manually hit my laps when doing speed work on the track since I know how far I’ve gone. If you’re ever doing intervals without distance markers, it could be helpful to set quarter or half-mile laps instead.

There is a limit to how many laps the Garmin can hold. If you’re a long-distance runner, this will fill up kind of quickly! There’s an easy fix for that, too.

Make sure you download your data regularly. When you get the alert that your lap database is full, go to History –> Running (or Biking/Other — wherever most of your mileage is) –> Delete. You can choose to keep one or three months — I usually keep one month if I know I’ve synced recently, or three months if I’m a little behind.

I also want to share one more thing I just learned. I’ve always used the software that came with the watch to manage all my data. I’d heard about third party applications, but never checked any out.

But I did recently sign up for Garmin Connect. And I wonder what took me so long to find it!

This is a race I ran on Sunday — I aptly named it “Metric Marathon” since that’s what it was — 26.2K (16.3 miles).  There’s a much better map than the software. And I love the splits and elevation!

Still working on that race report; I’ll type out those splits so you can actually read them!