Since taking delivery of my new training partner the Garmin Forerunner 405 I’ve only managed two runs because of work taking me all over the country last week. However, so far the verdict is that I like it.

I’m not great at gadgetty things – I have no patience when it comes to reading instructions and favour ‘learning as you go’. I’m sure I’ll get round to them all soon enough. There are lots of things that my new training buddy can do, but as yet I’ve not figured out how to do them.

A couple of things I have done though are to have set it for a 5-mile run and watched the miles tick down and my pace stay fairly steady all the way from Wimbledon to Richmond. Next I programmed a 6-mile run (about a week later) at a set pace on the computer-based training software thingy and watched the computer tell the Garmin what I had to do. I then put on my ipod and ignored the Garmin’s beeps telling me to ‘speed up’ or ‘slow down’ for the next hour.

Check me out slipping in the fact that I ran 6 miles on my own without the pressure or motivation of a race. This is the furthest I’ve run solo thus far and I’m quite pleased with myself.

Probably the most cool thing I’ve done with the Garmin (but so far not very useful) is to set a location. I’ve set my flat as ‘Home’ so if I ever get lost I can tell it to show me the way to go home and a compass will appear on the face of the watch to point me in the right direction. As my runs at the moment are at a maximum of 6 miles I doubt there’s much chance of me getting lost but i have identified two potential uses for this 1) when running while in a different town/city and 2) when drunk. Although after a few G&Ts, operating the Garmin’s touch bezel may prove more difficult than reciting the alphabet backwards.