Activity Recorded

Crosswinds Red Eye Horror #010

I bought the watch in February because my doctor mentioned my resting heart rate twice during the same appointment.

Not in a serious way. More in the tone people use when they’re trying to warn you gently about becoming the kind of man who dies at fifty-three and surprises nobody.

I’m thirty-six. I fly for work. My sleep schedule is inconsistent enough that I sometimes forget what city I woke up in three days earlier. Running seemed like the easiest solution. Cheap shoes, decent watch, thirty minutes around the neighborhood after work.

That was all it was supposed to be.

The watch itself was more advanced than anything I actually needed. GPS tracking. Sleep analysis. Heart rate variability. Stress monitoring. Recovery metrics. It gave little encouraging messages throughout the day like GOOD RECOVERY and TRAINING READINESS IMPROVING.

Within about two weeks I had become one of those people who checks their sleep score before getting out of bed.

Runners get obsessive quickly.

The first strange activity uploaded on a Tuesday morning.

I woke around six, grabbed my phone off the charger, and saw the Garmin notification immediately.

NEW ACTIVITY RECORDED.

At first I assumed I had accidentally started the watch sometime during the night. The route was short, barely over a mile, just a sloppy loop around my apartment complex beginning at 2:13 AM.

Then I noticed the biometric data.

Average heart rate: 151.

Cadence recorded.

Stride length.

Elevation changes.

Recovery impact.

I remember sitting there longer than I probably should have trying to understand how detailed the metrics were. It wasn’t just GPS drift. The watch believed my body had physically completed a run.

I deleted the activity and went to work.

Two days later another one uploaded.

Longer this time. Nearly three miles.

Same start time.

2:13 AM.

The route left my apartment complex, crossed the frontage road near the freeway, looped through a neighborhood I had never consciously run before, then returned home forty minutes later.

Average pace: 8:11.

That part bothered me immediately because I could barely maintain a ten-minute pace on a good day.

I spent most of that morning trying to think through explanations that did not involve losing control of my body during sleep. Software issue. Sleepwalking. GPS corruption. I actually searched whether Garmin watches could accidentally generate synthetic biometric data through sensor malfunction.

Apparently they can’t.

The runs continued.

Every two or three nights another activity uploaded. Always beginning at 2:13 AM. Always slightly longer than the last one.

And the watch kept congratulating me.

VO2 MAX IMPROVED.

RECOVERY TRENDING POSITIVE.

TRAINING STATUS: PRODUCTIVE.

I hated the tone of it more than anything else. Those cheerful little notifications attached to evidence that something was happening to me while I slept.

I stopped running entirely after the fifth activity.

That didn’t stop the uploads.

I know how insane that sounds.

I powered the watch off completely and left it in a kitchen drawer before bed. The next morning another activity appeared anyway.

Six-point-four miles.

Battery indicator dead.

Still, the run included:

• respiration data

• heart rate variability

• sweat loss estimates

• recovery recommendations

I remember sitting at the kitchen table staring at the recovery screen because the app was recommending increased mileage despite the fact I had not consciously exercised in almost two weeks.

That was also around the time I started feeling exhausted constantly.

Not sleepy exactly. Physically depleted.

My legs ached every morning. My appetite changed. I started waking up thirsty enough that I’d finish entire glasses of water without remembering reaching for them.

Meanwhile the watch metrics kept improving.

Resting heart rate dropping.

Recovery scores climbing.

Training readiness eventually upgraded from MAINTAINING to PEAK.

The routes changed too.

The early ones looked messy and random. Apartment loops. Side streets. Neighborhood sidewalks.

Eventually they became cleaner.

Purposeful.

The same roads repeated. The same turns. A gradual progression north out of town toward a wooded area near an old reservoir maintenance road.

Then one morning I noticed the stopping point.

Every route ended in the same clearing.

There was always a pause there.

Forty-seven minutes.

No movement.

Elevated heart rate the entire time.

Then the run resumed.

I drove out there that afternoon mostly because I could not think of anything else to do.

The trailhead sat behind an old chain-link gate with a faded county warning sign wired across it. Empty parking lot. No houses nearby.

I opened the route map on my phone while standing there.

The GPS trail matched perfectly.

I followed it on foot for maybe fifteen minutes before turning around.

Not because I saw anything.

Because the trail felt familiar.

I knew where the ground dipped before I reached it. I stepped over a fallen tree before consciously registering it was there. At one point I turned slightly to avoid a low branch that I could not yet see in the dark ahead of me.

Like my body had already memorized the route before I ever walked it awake.

That night I locked my bedroom door.

Not because I thought it would stop anything. More because I wanted to feel like I was responding rationally to the situation instead of simply observing it happen.

I also left my running shoes in the trunk of my car.

The next morning they were beside the apartment door again.

Mud packed into the tread.

One shoelace untied exactly the way I always leave it after long runs.

I actually called Garmin support after that.

I didn’t tell them the truth obviously. I described it as duplicated activity uploads and corrupted sleep tracking. The support guy remotely checked my account for almost twenty minutes before finally saying something that still bothers me to think about now.

He said the biometric data looked “extremely consistent.”

I asked what that meant.

He explained that synthetic uploads usually contain irregularities because generated metrics don’t align naturally with long-term recovery trends.

Mine did.

Perfectly.

He actually complimented my cardiovascular improvement before ending the call.

I stopped sleeping well after that.

Every night I found myself checking the clock repeatedly.

1:11.

1:43.

2:04.

Always waiting for 2:13.

Nothing ever happened while I was awake.

No missing time. No waking up outside. No horror movie nonsense.

I would simply fall asleep eventually and wake up to another completed run.

Three nights ago I decided to stay awake all night to prove to myself the watch was malfunctioning.

I sat upright in bed with the lights on watching the clock.

Midnight passed.

1:00.

1:38.

2:06.

I remember feeling embarrassed suddenly. Deeply embarrassed. Like I had allowed a fitness app to turn me into somebody afraid of sleep.

2:13 came and went.

Nothing happened.

I stayed awake another hour after that just to prove it to myself.

Eventually, sometime close to four, I drifted off sitting upright against the headboard.

I woke at 6:41 AM.

Same position.

Bedroom light still on.

Neck sore from sleeping upright.

For a few seconds I felt relieved.

Then I looked at the watch.

DAILY STEPS: 14,231.

TRAINING READINESS: OPTIMAL.

NEW PERSONAL RECORD.

I opened the route map expecting GPS drift or signal loss or something equally explainable.

The run ended at the reservoir.

Forty-seven minutes stationary.

Then nothing.

No return route.

I remember sitting there trying to understand how a run could end miles away from my apartment while I was still sitting upright in bed.

Then I looked down.

My calves were muddy to the knee.