Sunday, October 19, 2014

Purging the Training Equipment Graveyard


I started packing for next weekend's PPD Beach2Battleship race. That meant I was very open to non-packing alternatives to do!

It's no surprise then that my little "collection" of broken training equipment in the cabinet caught my interest. I'm generally an anti-hoarder, but I guess I'm a little sentimental about my oddly colored green Forerunner 405 that went to my first marathons and triathlons and logged a lot of miles. It's the same for the Garmin Edge 305 - it's accompanied me on many great adventures on the bike! But they are dead and gone, soul-less bits of plastic and electronics, blank faced, never to be revived, no more miles to be recorded.

But why did I keep two broken foot pods, seven broken heart rate monitors, broken headphones (hey never know when you might want to hear in just one ear), and a large collection of earbud covers all in sizes that don't fit me.

Sigh. One thing I will say, Garmin support is fantastic and if you want to know why things are a bit pricey - Well, it's because they are very good about replacing things when they break....and letting you keep the broken ones. Which I apparently do keep. For years.

One major upside to the purge is that in the process I discovered one brand spankin' new Garmin heart rate monitor that came with the new Edge and has never ever been used. Very wow!!! I have found that after 9 or 10 months the monitors get flaky even with a battery replacement plus they get stretched out too far to make them small enough to fit me.

So this is my current stash of what gets used regularly:


I'll confess I kept one foot pod "holder" and one non-functional heart rate monitor but recycled/tossed the rest.

Then I went to the garage and made this pile of tires and tubes to take to be recycled. There are reasons each of these came off my bike(s). In 5+ years I have never put an old one back on, so why do I think I would now? ("Good bike trainer tire" they say, but the bike trainer bike hits the road often enough that I need a tube/tire that I can trust.)


So you know what this all means, don't you?

Next week, one of the kids will have a school project where they need 6 old bike tires and 20 ear bud covers ;-)