The 405

My 40th birthday came early and in a big way thanks to my incredibly generous mother.  The present at the top of my wish list cost about $350 retail.  My mom figured with tax that would bring the total to about $400.  By her estimation $10 a year was a pretty reasonable amount to spend on her favorite and only son.  I suggested that she may want to refigure her estimation as I was pretty sure that some of those years (especially most of the teen years) I probably owed her more than $10.  She agreed, but pointed out that there were a lot of years that were easily worth $20 so an average of $10 a year was appropriate.  We went to REI and picked up the most powerful watch I have ever had on my wrist - the Garmin Forerunner 405 with Heart Rate Monitor.  

So, in the past few days I have spent time playing around with all the various functions and have had a couple of occasions to run with it and work with it in action.  Boy is it fun!  I am still figuring out some of the more interesting details of it, but I have discovered one unsettling bit of information.  This information has me in a quandary because it affects more than just myself.  Do I share this information with the running group or do I keep it to myself/ignore it and continue on the way we have for over a year now?  The disturbing information is that I now know precisely (or more precisely) how long we run.  And it ain't as far as we have been figuring.  What to do?  What to do?  At some point I am sure someone will ask, "Hey, Mr. Fancy-Watch-GPS-Heart-Rate-Monitor-Old-Timer-Bastard, how far does that super-fancy time piece say we actually ran?" and then I will have to be honest, won't I?  That question will probably be asked sooner rather than later now that I have posted this and most of the running group reads this on a regular basis.