I need to replace my Road ID as I lost my last one (I’ve had 2 or 3 already.) I like having the security of knowing that if I get hit by a car again that the emergency workers who find me will know who I am and who to contact if I’m unconscious (or worse) and can’t speak for myself.

The biggest problem with Road IDs is the convenience factor; it’s one more thing you need to remember to wear. I got around that problem by always wearing the dog-tag style IDs and just putting it on as soon as I woke up in the morning and then taking it off when I went to bed, but (as evidenced by myself) it is easy to lose your Road ID and then you need to go to the bother of getting a new one.

I just saw a brilliant solution by triathlete Cody Elder that makes it much less likely that you will lose your Road ID while making it much more likely that you’ll remember to wear it every time you run.

A lot of people don’t like having the tag bouncing around on their chest as they run, though, and instead will wear the bracelet, anklet or shoe versions. Since I usually have a watch on, I don’t really care to have multiple items wrapped around my wrist and never care for having anything wrapped around my ankle. (I’m glad fewer races are using the anklet chips for timing now that D-Tags and B-Tags are getting popular.) The shoe version would be all right if you only wore one pair of shoes, but I rotate my shoes regularly so that’s just another hassle.

Cody’s solution is to get one of the wrist-band version of the Road ID, and to use that to replace your watch band on your Garmin ForeRunner 205, 305 or 310xt.

The major disadvantage of this method is that the tag won’t be as noticeable and evident to emergency workers as a dog tag is, so if you have some serious allergies or a medical condition that you want them to know about right away when they find you o the scene then you should still use the dog tag version. However, if it just contains emergency contact info then having it on your watch band should be fine as they’d find it when they took the watch off of you either in the ambulance or at the hospital.

Replacing a watch band on the ForeRunners isn’t that difficult; you just need to take the pins off and put the new watch band in place. The most difficult part is replacing the pins, but that shouldn’t take more than about 5 minutes. Here’s a video of the entire process that Cody put together:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTut_HLWAqA

If you leave enough slack then you can fit the cradle beneath the watch band so that you don’t need to remove the pins to charge your watch.

This is a brilliant idea, and I’m going to order a new Road ID this weekend in order to implement it.

On a related note…Road ID is currently holding a holiday promotion through the end of the year with some really cool prizes. You can enter by following them on Facebook or Twitter (1 entry each), by making a donation to one of their favorite charities (1 entry per $5 donated) or by making a purchase from them (1 entry per $20) and there’s no limit to the number of entries. So, it’s worth at least entering using the free methods, and I’ll recommend getting yourself or a loved one a Road ID for Christmas (which has been a gift I’ve given in the past.)

Just click the banner above if you want to check out the details on their site. Prizes include bikes, treadmills, shoes, GPS watches, sunglasses, and more.

More info and detailed instructions: Cody Elder Tri – Photo Sources: Marcos Pozo López – Road ID