It’s often said that we only ever use around 10% of our brain at any one time, and that reassures me about my Garmin. The Forerunner 405 can do a lot of things that will make me faster: there’s the ‘virtual training partner’, the structured workouts, the heart rate monitor – all of which I never use. I hate to think of my Garmin getting frustrated every time I put it on just to measure the same old routes, but my brain doesn’t seem to be complaining about watching the same old TV just yet.

That said, I do love my Garmin. It has made running a lot simpler (maybe because I don’t exploit its functionality to the full). I put on my kit and my Garmin and then just run in whatever direction I fancy, knowing that when I look down at my wrist I’ll know how far I’ve gone and how fast I got there. Gone are the days of tirelessly clicking on a Google map to see how many miles a lap of the park is or trying to remember if I went left or right at that junction. For a lazy runner like me, something to measure how far you went is a must.

I think the little green mileage machine has also helped my running. The key to running further is running slower, so so my Garmin has taught me to slow down on long runs. And looking at last year’s runs compared to this year’s, I’ve also been able to notice an increase in speed overall. So, fo all those reason, the Garmin Forerunner 405 makes my Top 10.  See what else made the Top 10.