You took your new GPS watch out of the box and started running. Below are a few advanced settings you should change to improve the accuracy of your data in the future. Some settings are in the “Activity Settings” menu and others are in the “System Settings” or just “Settings” menu.

1. Lap Button: the bottom right corner of your Garmin is sometimes labeled with a back arrow. On some Garmins (Forerunner 55 for instance) the default setting for this button is to pause your workout. You want to change that to Lap in the Activity settings. This way, you can create splits during your workout to segment data for hill reps, intervals, and similar workouts.

2. GPS Every Second: in System settings, change Data Recording to Every Second. The default is Smart Recording. Every Second recording does a much better job providing accurate data.

3. Auto Pause: disable auto pause for running workouts in the Activity settings. For the most accurate data, it’s better to manually start and stop the workout using the top right button on the watch if you get stuck at a red light or need to stop running for some reason. You should generally keep the watch running for planned walking/jogging breaks though so your data reflects scheduled recovery periods.

-Sam Sharp