gps watchs

violator13

Im looking to buy.Antbody got one?.The garmin forerunner 301 with heart monitor looks a good buy on the net..i presume a us model would work here??

lindab

polar all the way.

Stark

violator13 wrote: »

Im looking to buy.Antbody got one?.The garmin forerunner 301 with heart monitor looks a good buy on the net..i presume a us model would work here??

If you're getting a Forerunner, I recommend the 305 over the 301. Much better at keeping a signal when the signal gets obstructed by trees and the like.

lindab

gota be polar

Peckham

I use the nice and basic Forerunner 201. Very rarely have problems with signal and have run races all over the place (City centre, Achill, Switzerland), and I train in a rural area.

If you're looking to spend minimal money on it and don't want a HRM, then it's the one for you.

dec_6

Thinking of getting a Forerunner 305 too. There seems to be a huge variation in price between some of the different online retailers. €244 on expansys.ie up to €389 on komplett.ie. I've read some really good reviews about it. The only thing putting me off buying it at the moment is the size. It looks a bit bulky. Would like to get a look at it first. Anyone know of any shops in Dublin that sell it?

run_Forrest_run

2 friends of mine both have the Garmin Forerunner 305 and they love it. Yes it is quite large but they said it is easy to get used to.
What a cool piece of kit it is too.

--amadeus--

I don't think the 201 / 301 are available anymore are they? They have been replaced by the 205 / 305 I think??

I use teh 305 and it is a stunning piece of kit. It's not *that* much bigger than a large watch and you certainly don't feel it when running. It tracks speed, distance, elevation, HR, everything. You can program workouts (eg 10 * 100m sprints with 30 sec recoveries) or set alarms if you go below a certain pace or above a given HR. I would say that if you are in any way serious about your running then it is a great investment.

Now the not so good... I used it in the Berlin marathon and it bombed at 16 miles, it must have lost the signal but it didn't give any warning, just slowed down it's distance and pace recordings so that if I had run a mile it only showed up as a fraction of a mile. It then unwound from 17 miles back to 16.19 where it stayed till the finish line! Looking back I can see teh funny side but at the time it screwed my pacing plans and left me a bit up the creek. I also regularly have immense difficulty getting the PC to recognise it when it's plugged into teh USB port.

Overall well worth it though.

Racing Flat

I used to use a Timex GPS. Was good and accurate but had to wear GPS receiver on arm or waist band, which I was never too comfortable with. Kind of felt like I was wearing red football boots - not really me, don't want to give my competitiors (or worse, training partners) reason to bait me. Was a present but I think only about 100 dollars in America, so much cheaper than Garmin. When I decided to try Heart rate training decided to 'upgrade' to Garmin Forerunner 305. Got mine from irishfit.com and am delighted with it. Have it about a year now. For the poster who wants a look they have them in Great Outdoors in Dublin (upstairs) for around 475Euro but as stated above they can be got cheaper than this online.

What's so good about it is it does so much and you have the options of having up to 4 'windows' on the screen at once, and you can scroll between 3 of these screens. So I have my 3 set up - one for easy/long runs (time, distance, heart rate and pace), one for speed sessions (lap time, lap pace, lap heart rate, heart rate) and one for tempo runs (lap time, lap distance, lap pace, lap heart rate) so don't have to fiddle around before each session. There's lots more you can do, it's like a compass aswell but I don't use 10% of the features. Because it links to your computer it's great for post-training ananlysis if you're that way inclined.

Downsides - having to wait outside for a minute or two to pick up a signal - never takes long, better than the Timex, but still, in the Winter, that minute can seem very long! And having to charge it every 10 hours. Easy to do this on charger or computer, but the very occasional time I forget it's a right bummer when you're doing a tempo run, trying to stick to 5.50minutes per mile or whatever and the battery goes dead, so you've no feedback at all, not even time! Othen than that, it's not in any way heavy, true it looks bulky, but it's very light. I didn't think I'd like wearing the chest strap for the heart rate monitoring but not even aware of this now.

I only wear it for training - not for races. I think part of the challenge of racing is trying to get the pace right etc. also, would I be right in saying they are illegal in Competition races?

Regarding the heart rate training - this has revolutionised my training. I used to do everything too fast, got a proper fitness test done and a plan made out based on this. The result was all my easy runs were about 30secs a mile slower - felt very slow at first and worried I would lose fitness but then I started pumping out best ever times in training ( I suppose because the easy runs were easier, I had more energy for training) and races. So wouldn't go back now. And it's great seeing over the year, my pace at my heart rate zone for easy runs going from 8.30 a mile to 7.30 - a real sign of improvement.

In relation to problems - I've used mine her, in the Carribean, South America and have had no signal problems anywhere. And I must say it's great when you see your runs on the map, specially if it's somewhere else in the world. Plus, while you may know the distances of your local runs, you'll have no idea when somewhere new, so good feedback. Word of warning - you'll probably find what you thought was 6 miles is really 5.5 so can be a bit depressing initially!

I also had problems with connecting to computer at one stage. This was I think because I updated the software on the computer, but not on the watch. Know nothing about computers so didn't know what to do, couldn't work it on the computer for a few weeks although the watch itself still worked fine. Eventually I tracked down a fellow called Andy Phillips of Garmin in the UK and he advised me how to fix this through e-mails - was very simple. Unfortunatley I've mislaid his e-mail address but you should be able to track him down. Now whn I connect it to compuetr occasionally it says '...problem connecting to device...' but usually if I just turn watch on or off and try again it works the sceond time.

Racing Flat

lindab - why polar? And do you have to wear something on your shoe? Reason I ask a friend has been offered one as a present, but I wonder whether it is better to ? pay more to get a ? better product in the Garmin, but as I know nothing about polar, biased in advising friend

dec_6

My mind has been made up. Thanks for the information --amadeus--, run_Forrest_run and Racing Flat. Irishfit.eu seems good. Hopefully will have it for Christmas.

Fast_Mover

Hi lads,
I go running for exercise. I run around the roads, woods, pitches. Nothing major..just to get out and about, build up fitness.
I'd love a watch so I can time myself, measure what distances im running, take splits.(Anything else I need?!)
Can anyone knowledgeable being out there recommend me a watch? Cheap (I know im not going to get one for €10 or anything but the most reasonable, I am a student after all!:D), reliable.
Thanks!:)

daveyrovers

Hey Dec-6.

They are cheaper on www.amphbianking.ie and I rang they have them in stock. Just if you're looking to get one for christmas.

dec_6

Thanks daveyrovers. I checked out that site. They don't seem to do the Garmins but I thinking of getting a polar with a footpod instead. They have these and I'm not too far from their shop in Bray.

Fast_Mover

Whats the difference between a footpod and GPS?
Which would ye reccomend and why?

--amadeus--

GPS is satalite based technology. Your unit tunes into a signal from 3 geostationary satelites in orbit and from that it can triangulate your exact position (literally to within 3 feet). It was originally US military technology and is hyper accurate. Your unit will communicate with the satelites and calculate teh difference in your last reported position and current one and (based on time, which it also records) it can then calculate your speed, direction, distance traveled, etc. As you are plotted in 3D it can also calculate elevation changes (great if you are training for a hilly event) and all of this data can be downloaded onto a PC for later analysis.

I don't know the footpad that well having never used it myself but I believe it is a sophisticated pedometer. I think it counts the number of footstrikes and based on that calculates your distance traveled, based off a known stride length. As in if your stride is 3' and you footstrike 100 times then you have traveled 300'. I am up for correction on this though but I don't believe it has teh same depth of information that GPS does. It is probably signifigantly cheaper tho!

I would guess it comes down to money and how geeky you are - having a high nerd quotient myself I had to have teh GPS!

robinph

Well the satelites are not actually stationary and you'll need to be locked onto at least four of them to get a decent fix for your position. As to how the information from 30 odd constantly moving satelites can then be used to calculate your exact position pretty much anywhere on the planet, well your best not trying to figure it out as your brain would probably melt in the process, just have to accept that it does work.

Different GPS recievers will work better depending on where you are running, if its a lot of running around a city amongst tall buildings then you may have trouble getting a good signal and also running through trees can cause you to loose a signal as well. I think there was a huge change in the quality of the reception between the Garmin x01 range and the x05 range though and they should be good running through all but the particularly dense tree cover, and there are not enough skyscrapers around Ireland for the tall buildings to be an issue.

I actually ended up going for a Polar HRM with foot pod in the end though, partially down to wanting a different GPS as well. The foot pods are accelerometers that measure the speed that your foot is moving and from that your stride length can be figured out. Polar claimed 95% accuracy with the footpod without callibrating it to your own stride pattern and 99% once you do calibrate it. I've not done the calibration on mine but it was at least 95% accurate I think, assuming that the mile markers in the races I've done with it were actually positioned correctly.