Settings on the Garmin 305

I have a friend that wants to set up the auto pause on her Garmin 305 so I thought I would help her out and anyone else who would like to change a couple of settings.  I only talked about a couple of things but would be happy to add to this if there was something you wanted to know.  I love playing with my Garmin and figuring out stuff. Just leave me a comment and I can look into it.  One thing I will probably add in the future is the virtual partner.  I've been wanting to try that out and when I do I'll add to this post.

This post covers
Auto Pause
Auto Lap
Alerts
Hard Reset

AUTO PAUSE

During your training runs you may want to change your Garmin to auto-pause when you come to a stop.  The auto-pause stops the clock when there is no motion or satellite signal.  Your Garmin will auto-pause when you stop at lights but it will also auto-pause when you run under bridges (depending on the distance you are under the bridge) and auto-pause when running around tall buildings or lots of trees.  I recommend to turn OFF the auto-pause feature in races to get a more accurate time.

Here are the steps

1. Turn on your Garmin.  It doesn’t need to find satellites in order to make the change
2. Press the MODE button in the bottom left
3.  Press the ARROW DOWN to TRAINING and press the ENTER button in the bottom right to select TRAINING
4.  Press ENTER on TRAINING OPTIONS
5. ARROW DOWN to AUTO PAUSE and press ENTER
6.  Using the ARROW keys, select the option you want.  The options available are OFF, WHEN STOPPED and CUSTOM PACE.  The CUSTOM PACE option you can set it to any per mile pace.  This would be useful if you want to stop the Garmin when you are walking.  Sometimes I walk around some while eating a GU or waiting for someone.  It would be useful to not be recording in those situations.

AUTO LAP

I love this feature and have my Garmin automatically lap for me on each mile.  This allows me to easily get my mile splits. You can set the Garmin to auto lap by distance or also by position.  For example, if you were running laps around your neighborhood, you could lap every time you ran by the fire hydrant.  I haven’t used this option so I’m not real familiar with using it.

Here are the steps:

1. Turn on your Garmin.  It doesn’t need to find satellites in order to make the change.
2. Press the MODE button in the bottom left
3.  Press the ARROW DOWN to TRAINING and press the ENTER button in the bottom right to select TRAINING
4.  Press ENTER on TRAINING OPTIONS
5. ARROW DOWN to AUTO LAP and press ENTER
6. Using the ARROW keys and the ENTER key, select BY DISTANCE, BY POSITION or OFF

• BY DISTANCE using the ARROW keys, select where you want to lap at.  I have mine set for 1 mile but you can set it for anything you want
•  BY POSITION you can choose LAP PRESS ONLY, START and LAP or MARK and LAP.

ALERTS

The alerts feature is another setting that I have used in the past but turned it off.   Since the the auto lap (see above) is taking my mile split and beeps at the mile mark as well, I don't use any of the distance alerts.   You can set the distance to any amount you want so I suppose a 5K or some other distance may be helpful in a race or run.

I have used the alert to let me know when I’m running too fast or too slow.  I had this setting on during a half marathon and as time wore on, I got slower and I was continually triggering the alert and the watch was beeping non-stop annoying me and I’m sure the other runners around me. 

The alerts that are available are

•  Time/Distance Alert
•  Pace alert
•  HR alert

Here are the steps:

1. Turn on your Garmin.  It doesn’t need to find satellites in order to make the change.
2. Press the MODE button in the bottom left
3. Press the ARROW DOWN to TRAINING and press the ENTER button in the bottom right to select TRAINING
4. Press ENTER on TRAINING OPTIONS
5. ARROW DOWN to ALERTS and press ENTER
6. Select Time/Distance Alert, Pace Alert or HR Alert

• TIME/DISTANCE – there is a REPEAT option and a ONCE option
• Time alert – alert you every X number of minutes/second
• Distance alert – alert you every X Miles.
• PACE
•  Fast pace – alert when greater than X pace
•  Slow pace – alert when slower than X pace
• HR
• Minimum HR – alert when heart rate falls below X bpm
• Maximum HR – alert when heart rate is above X bpm

Hard Reset

To perform the master reset:

1. Power off watch (press and hold Light, Yes on prompt)^†
2. Press and hold Start/Stop and Lap/Reset
3. Press and hold Light (three buttons should now be pressed in)
4. After first beep, release Start/Stop
5. After second beep, release Lap/Reset
6. Release Light