Wearing a Garmin during a marathon

I've both worn it, and gone without in various races.

Wear it, but set the screens to show elapsed time.  Your distance will be off, anyway, and mile splits are going to be fairly meaningless for your first.

Wear it but ignore it. Use it to record your splits and HR for posterity and further analysis.

Your first marathon should be run moostly by feel and not by some preconceived estimate of what your pace should be. The caveat to that is that if you don't feel that you're going too slow at the start then you're probably going too fast.

Baowolf

First off...congrats on an awesome first Mary.  But since you had the HRM on and were able to hold a nice run the entire time I am curious to hear your stats.  What was your avg and max HR for the race, did you negative split or steady, and what was your HR like in training for the long runs?

thanks

wear it,,

I"ve done them both wearing one and not... I like the info afterwards, and it doesn't really bother me that much,, I'll have the display to pace/HR and toggle it to time/pace, it never really distracted me..

I can't imagine not wearing my Garmin during  a race.

That said, since it's your first, don't become obsessed with time/ distance/ pace, and def. don't set the pace guy!

It's actually relatively easy, once you've done it a couple times.

OK, because I'm bored, I'm gonna say it....

I find it interesting all the people who say they aren't a slave to it, but can't imagine not using it.

As others said, it almost definitely won't be in sync with the course markers.

I also agree with those who advise simplicity -- don't use the pacer and stuff like that.

Anyway, to answer your question:  I wear mine, but only because I don't have any other watch.  I hit the lap button when I reach the mile markers rather than using the Garmin to determine split times (but whether the Garmin or the mile markers is more accurate is a crap shoot...).  In my last marathon, though, I admit this ended up being a problem, since I hit the 'stop' button once by accident and screwed everything up.

Anyway, it's nice to have SOME sort of watch on, since you will very likely not be starting at the front of the pack, and the posted times at the mile markers will therefore be very different from your actual time.  Sure, you can do the math in your head, but that math gets 'fuzzy' after mile 22. 

Says who???