Nervous purchase

So I bought this on Monday.

I know. Nothing new on race day.

Never fear, it's not new anymore. I've taken it on a couple of training runs now. What can possibly go wrong?

My fear that something might go wrong is what got me into this situation. My 910XT's battery has been fading and I was worried that it wasn't going to go the distance on Saturday. I don't know what kind of state I'll be in on Saturday so I wanted to make sure something would remember where I'd been!

After a bit of research over the weekend I found myself in Johnny Appleseed at 4.30 on Monday afternoon asking the young sales assist about the fenix 2.

He started talking me through the myriad of features. I don't know that I'll use most of them - after all, there are functions for 'Mountaineer' as well as 'Hike'. Not to mention 'XC Ski' and 'Ski board'.

Don't ask me, I don't know either.

He quickly moved on to the benefits of a run specific heart rate strap, which will not only send heart rate data, but also ground contact time and vertical oscillation.

Even though I still don't know why I need to know this, my mind was blown.

I diverted him back to the fenix 2 by mentioning that the main feature I was after was battery life.

"Well this is the right choice. You'll be able to run for up to 50 hours with this one."

I felt slightly terrified at the sound of these words... but I started it, right?

I walked out of the shop not only several hundred dollars lighter, but even more terrified at the prospect of having to get this thing figured out and set up in race week. I realised this isn't the first time I'd done this - I bought my 910XT two days before flying to Europe for Challenge Roth - and wondered why I do this to myself.

I got in my car feeling both calm and nervous, in control but excited. Race week had begun. In six days time I would be able to call myself an ultra runner. New fenix 2 and all.

I spent most of Monday night getting rather frustrated after reading the wrong user manual and not getting anywhere. But here I am on Thursday night and I've got two test runs under my belt and enough basic setup to be able to get the data I will want on Saturday.

I'll figure out how to calibrate the altimeter and use the geogaching function later.