Garmin Troubles?

I decide to review my latest run data on my Garmin Forerunner 305 before going to bed only to discover that it will not turn on. The battery should still have a good amount of juice as it was fully charged for my long run on Sunday (and the Forerunner 305's are known to get nearly 10 hours on a single charge), so I am somewhat concerned.

I remember that Justin had a similar problem with his 205 last year and that there is a combination of buttons you need to press to get the watch to turn on, but I certainly do not know what they are. I pull up Garmin's website and search the support section for my watch. Following the site's instructions, I connect my watch to the computer, press and hold the mode and lap (reset) buttons for ten seconds. Upon releasing the buttons, the watch displays that it is charging and my computer attempts to read the latest data.

Though it appears to finish uploading data to my PC, a message warns that there was a problem receiving activities. This morning's five mile run has not been added to Garmin Training Center. Now I start to worry.

Garmin's website also recommends that I use their web updater to make sure my watch has the latest firmware. Much to my surprise, I do not...so I let the updater do its thing. Once the process completes, my watch refuses to power on again...so I follow the steps above to perform a soft reset one more time.

I again try to upload the data. Training Center still reports having an issue reading the activities.

I disconnect the watch from the computer, deciding to take a closer look at the history data for this morning's run. The data IS there. Time, pace, heart rate, calories, 5 laps (I use auto lap per mile). I take a closer look per lap. The breakdown is there. I select to view each lap on map. Wait a minute?!?! Where is the track data from my GPS? The lap markers show up among my recorded navigation points as expected, but there is no line connecting the dots!

Is it possible my watch ran out of memory without any warning? Today's run pushed my year-to-date total to 804.28 miles...all of which is currently stored in my watch. Since I minimally record a lap for each mile (and runs finishing with fractions include an additional lap), it is possible my watch is holding close to its 1000 lap maximum. I always thought that the Forerunner simply would start removing older history items once this limit was reached, but perhaps I am wrong.

So I must manually add the data from today's run into Training Center. Hopefully deleting all of the history on my watch will fix the upload problem. I have a seven miler tomorrow morning and I want to make sure IT and every run thereafter gets recorded!