7 Tips for Maintaining Your Marathon Military Watch

The “military” part of “Marathon military watch” clues you in to the fact that it’s not some delicate piece of jewelry you wear to impress people at fancy restaurants. This thing was built for military field use, saltwater, Arctic temperatures, and the kind of punishment that would send a fashion watch to an early grave. It’s basically the tactical gear of the watch world.

But even the toughest tools need some love. A Marathon isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it situation: no decent watch is. A little routine maintenance is the difference between a watch that lasts decades and one that fails you at the worst possible moment. Here are seven practical tips to keep yours running like the day it shipped.

1. Rinse It Off After Field Use

Saltwater and mud are sneaky villains. They look harmless enough, but salt is extremely corrosive to metal case components and bracelet hardware, and fine grit can work its way into crown seals. After any real-world exposure to water, salt, mud, dust, or heavy debris, run your watch under fresh, lukewarm water and use a soft-bristle brush to clear the gunk from around the crown, lugs, and case back edge. Dry it off completely before storing or wearing.

Don’t forget the strap. Nylon and rubber straps handle debris pretty well, but they still benefit from a quick rinse. Metal bracelets are worse offenders since they trap salt and grit in every little link.

The whole rinse process takes maybe two minutes, and it meaningfully extends the life of the watch’s exterior. Two minutes. You spend longer than that deciding what to watch on Netflix.

2. Keep an Eye on the Crown and Gaskets

The crown, that small knob on the side you use for winding and setting the time, is the watch’s main vulnerability. It’s almost always where moisture finds a way in. Marathon military models typically use a screw-down crown that locks against the case to form a seal. It’s a solid system, but that seal relies on a rubber gasket that wears down over time.

Check it periodically. If you notice fogging inside the crystal, moisture near the dial edges, or condensation on the case back, your gasket is telling you something important, and it’s not good news. Gasket replacement is routine stuff for any experienced professional watch repair service, but it’s not something to keep putting off. A worn gasket on a watch rated for submersion is basically just a watch with delusions of water resistance.

3. Be Gentle with the Tritium Tubes

Most Marathon military watches use GTLS illumination, which stands for Gaseous Tritium Light Source. These are tiny glass tubes containing tritium, a low-energy radioactive hydrogen isotope, that glow constantly without ever needing a battery charge or light exposure. They’re self-contained, always-on, and built specifically for environments where you can’t exactly pull out a flashlight.

The catch? They’re glass. The tubes are tough by design, but direct impact can crack them, so don’t press on the dial markers or slam the watch face down on concrete. A cracked tube darkens at that marker and loses its glow faster than the normal decay rate. Tritium has a half-life of roughly 12 years, meaning brightness naturally cuts in half over that period anyway. Cracking a tube just speeds up the clock, so to speak, and there’s no field fix for it.

If you notice sudden dimming, you’ve likely cracked a tube. If it’s a more gradual thing, that could be the tritium aging. Either way, an authorized Marathon watch repair service can replace the tubes and restore your watch’s glow.

4. Respect the Pressure and Shock Ratings

Depth ratings aren’t suggestions, and they aren’t permanent guarantees either. Each Marathon model is pressure-tested to a specific threshold. However, gaskets age. An older watch may not perform the same as a brand-new one at the same depth. Also worth knowing: those ratings reflect static pressure. A cannonball jump into a pool can subject the watch to forces that aren’t perfectly reflected by its static depth rating.

Shock resistance works the same way. The movements are tested for defined impact levels, but repeated hard knocks against metal surfaces add up over time. If your watch starts running noticeably fast or slow after a significant impact, don’t just wait and hope it sorts itself out. Get it looked at by someone with Marathon experience. (That watch kind, not the 26.2 kind.)

5. Wear It or Wind It

Automatic movements like the GSAR caliber found in many military-issue Marathon watches rely on wrist motion to stay wound. Let one sit untouched for a week, and the mainspring runs completely down. That’s perfectly normal, but if you wear the watch regularly, keeping it wound helps maintain consistent performance and accuracy between uses. That’s a solid argument for just wearing the thing regularly, as if you need an excuse to wear a cool watch.

If you’re storing it for more than a week, give it a full manual wind before you put it away. Or invest in a watch winder, which handles longer storage periods without requiring daily handling. Keeping the movement running consistently also helps the lubricants stay distributed where they’re supposed to be.

Wear it regularly, wind it before letting it sit, or store it in a watch winder if you prefer having it ready to wear at any time.

6. Keep It Away from Magnets and Temperature Extremes

Your Marathon doesn’t want to live next to a speaker, magnetic tool holder, tablet cover, or magnetic knife strip in your kitchen. Strong magnetic fields can affect a watch movement, causing it to run consistently fast. Store your watch somewhere away from obvious magnetic sources.

Temperature matters too. High heat thins out the movement lubricants and causes them to migrate away from critical surfaces. Extended cold thickens them up and slows everything down. Neither extreme is doing your watch any favors. A dry, room-temperature spot is the boring but correct answer.

This doesn’t mean your watch is like a precious orchid that sulks dramatically if the thermostat dips two degrees. It’s a machine designed for hard use and field conditions. But being mindful of long-term exposure to temperature extremes can increase longevity.

7. Get It Professionally Serviced

Mechanical and automatic watches need a full service every three to five years. This usually involves cleaning and re-lubricating the movement, replacing gaskets, pressure-testing the case, inspecting worn components, and regulating accuracy. Lubricants break down with use and time, and worn parts don’t get better on their own just because you’re ignoring them.

Watch repair for a military-spec timepiece should mean a watchmaker who knows the brand, uses genuine parts, and follows manufacturer specifications. Ideally, you’d work with a repair service authorized by Marathon.

A generalist shop without specific experience might lack access to the right components or simply not know how to properly regulate a military-grade movement. It’s the difference between taking your Italian sports car to a dealership versus a guy who mostly works on economy cars and figures it’s probably the same.

Before your scheduled service window, watch for warning signs that something needs attention sooner: a drop in accuracy, fogging or moisture inside the crystal, a crown that won’t screw down fully, or any visible dial damage that might have affected a tritium tube.

A Marathon is built to outlast conditions that break other watches. The maintenance routine above isn’t complicated or time-consuming, and most of it takes less than five minutes. The payoff is a watch that remains accurate, water-resistant, and ready for the kind of hard use it was built to handle.

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Infographic

A Marathon military watch is built for hard use, but even the toughest tools need routine care to keep performing reliably for decades rather than failing when it matters most. Discover seven tips for maintaining your Marathon military watch in this infographic.