What you see is what you get; how to customize you Forerunner screens

And so in light of Alice’s and Bob’s recent observations that the Garmin Forerunner 305 is now on sale at Costco for $160 (guess what my wife is getting for Christmas!) I thought I would share some of the features and things you can do with yours, this will I think also apply to a 205 with the exception of anything to do with HR.

When I first got my Garmin Forerunner 305, one of the annoyances was the need to dig into the settings menu to look at the time, it wasn’t until somebody told me you can customize your screens that I realized what other info I could look at. So this quick post will tell you how you can set up the three screens to see the data you want to see rather than the default.

There are three screens that rotate available for customization: Main 1, Main 2 and Running, this is the same for “Biking” which I use and for “Other” which I haven’t, I assume swimming, skiing and snowboarding, or indeed anything else that begins with "S"...you know skating, stamp collecting and Scrabble etc, could be used here. A couple of other points to note; in case you wondering what the little white square is just below the word Garmin, it's a reminder to me to switch between Bike and Run and the "flecking" below the Start/stop and Lap Buttons is delamination of the surface due to insect repellent during the summer; water resistant; yes, insect repellent resistant; no!

Anyway to get back on topic. To set up the screens to show some really interesting data follow these instructions:

Press Mode to enter the Settings menu
Use Up/Down to scroll down to Settings, press Enter
Press Enter to select General
Scroll down to Data Fields press Enter
Select Main 1 Press Enter

Here you will be prompted to select the number of quadrants you want and will see the screen divided into four quarters, in the middle is the quadrant tally scroll up or down to select the number of quadrants you want (1 is minimum, 4 is maximum). Using the Up/Down to scroll to the number of quadrants you want, press Enter. You will then be prompted to use the Up/Down and Enter buttons to select the field you want to view.

You then repeat that for all for quadrants. Press Mode to exit back to the Main 1/Main2/Running menu and repeat for Main 2 and Running.

My preferences are:
Running: Pace / Lap Pace / Calories
Main 1: Pace / Average Pace / Distance / Lap Distance (a lap for me is 1 mile)
Main 2: Distance / Heart Rate / Average Cadence / Time, this is moving time

For Biking I have the following:
Biking: Time / Current Lap / Average Cadence / Lap Cadence
Main 1: Speed / Average Speed / Distance / Lap Distance
Main 2: Distance / Heart Rate / Average Cadence / Time, this is moving time

As you can see there are some repeats, to be honest after playing with it these are the ones that I come back to more often that not.

For both running and biking for the cadence to work you will need a Footpod and Cadence Monitor. The Footpod also allows you to use a Forerunner on a Treadmill and the Cadence Monitor can be used on a bike trainer, both of which are important to those of you in more winter climates.

Finally you can vary the speed of screen rotation. From the same menu as Data Fields select Display, select Auto Scroll Timer; I suggest Fast to minimize the risk of running into a lamp post while gazing at all this newly discovered data.

PS the layout of text to photos looked ok to me on a 19"monitor at 1280 x 1024