A GPS Watch and refereeing

Toward the end of last year I picked up a new Garmin Forerunner 405 w/ Heart Rate Monitor on eBay.  I wanted to start road cycling again, however found out that my old cycling computer had died.  It had been years since I was able to ride my bike, so I wasn't surprised to find it not working any longer.  I decided to pick up this Garmin watch in order to keep track of where I went, distances, heart rates, calories burned, speed, and even get me home if I took a wrong turn somewhere.  Once I got it though, I noticed it connects directly into Google Earth and that I could zoom down to show exactly where I was riding.  It was so precise that I could actually see if I cut through a parking lot instead of going all the way around the corner.  At that point I realized that this watch could be used for refereeing soccer games, and used really well to keep track of where I was on the field and how far I ran.

Middle of a women's DIII match between #1 Messiah & #8 Johns Hopkins.

This fall, I've started using the Garmin 405 for almost every game that I've refereed (and for the ones I didn't wear it, I estimated what I would have run).  Through 27 games I've refereed this fall, in both the Referee and an Assistant Referee position, I've run 114.46 miles.  That ends up to be approximately 4.25 miles per game that I've refereed so far this fall season.  If I continue that pace for the rest of the season, I'll have run 216.75 miles within the 10 weeks of fall ... or basically running from Baltimore, MD to White Plains, NY.  I never knew that I ran that much throughout games, and this includes games that I'm running through the middle of the field (like in the picture) and games that I'm running on just one sideline the whole time.  When I'm in the middle, I average just about 6 miles for the game.  The highest total so far was 6.57 miles, in this Hopkins v. Messiah game.  When I'm on the sideline I average just about 3 miles for the game.

Plus the Garmin 405 is great because you can set "Advanced Workouts" on the computer.  Basically I set up the timings for entire games, high school games and college games separately since they're different timings, and I'm able to scroll through to the "workout", press "do workout" and I have everything there.  I recently had a high school game that went all the way through 2 overtimes and the score was still tied.  The watch did everything I set it up for and went through the entire game without a problem.

Oh, and in case you're wondering ... I've been able to ride my bike 6 times since I've bought the watch.  I've ridden 138.83 miles in 9 hours 11 minutes 5 seconds, for an average speed of 15.1mph.  So yes, I do actually use the GPS watch for what I bought it for in the first place.