My lovely little running buddy

**In the interest of getting on board with technology, this post is entirely from my iPhone. Sorry for any poor formatting.**

A few months back I cracked it and decided I was going to buy myself a garmin, I knew which one I wanted thanks to some help from Runner Leana. So I stalked eBay and bid my little heart out, only to miss out countless times. I refused to pay so much for a glorified watch! Things started getting ridiculous. Until that fateful day when I got the pop up - great, outbid again. Nope, I had won! I was even more excited when the box arrived at our door and the price tag was still on it! I paid only a quarter of what they paid and it was virtually brand new! The previous owner had even forgotten to scrap the 3 runs they had done on it!

So now he comes with me on all my runs, although having come from Nike+ on my iPhone there are some clear advantages

- the tracking information is excellent, laps, pace, exact location etc is all very precise, my Nike+ used to have lots of glitches in it where it would zig zag along my track and have a pace of 30 sec/km.

- it is so much smaller than my phone that I barely notice that I'm wearing it,

- the battery life is amazing, I could go for 10 runs without the battery dying, great for travel. I used to lose at least half of the iPhone battery going for a run.

And disadvantages;

- I no longer run with my phone, both for safety and for when I get lost in other cities.

- I can't see my run immediately, I need to take it home and sync up to the computer.

- it can take a long time to connect with the satellites depending on where I am. Although the plus side is that I use this time to warm up and ensure my pesky calves are stretched out.

I also need to run with an iPod for my music, although it is a tiny shuffle so I barely even notice it so that doesn't go into either column.

Do you have a garmin? How does your iPhone hold up? What else do you use?