Running numbers.

I can’t run without my Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS sport watch as what others can’t run without their shorts. Given to choose, I must have the Forerunner 205 strapped to my wrist than putting-on a running vest....I think shorts is a must-have !

Garmin Forerunner 205 :-

With 7 – 10 satellites (and sometime more) signal locked to it, the watch is like a mini computer processing lots of data and it fit nicely on my slim wrist! It tells me in real-time the speed, pace, split, distance, elevation, elapsed time and much more. Not only it can churn out all the running numbers for me to analyze during post-run but I can superimpose my run route to the map and see exactly where I have ran. During training runs, it can trigger me if I exceed or fall below my pre-set speed limit. It alerts me too when I reached a certain distance and its time to turn around and heads back home so that I don’t over train. And the most impressive feature is it will auto-lap every 1km (or 2km or 5km) depending the distance I set, a very useful feature so that I can know my average training pace and use that to estimate my finishing time for a race. I am really hooked on all the information that it provides. Call me a data junky.

And the Training Center software for computer that comes together with this gadget can copy and save all the data that was logged during a run. For the 2 years and 2 months that I have it, I have run 2708.71km....yes..down to 10m precision ! I have run 3 marathons and many shorter distance races with it. It also displays a graph for each run ie: distance vs speed vs pace or any combination that I desired. It’s the best electronics gadget that I owned so far and the highest ROI.

Now with the availability of newer model ie: Forerunner 405, I am tempted to get one with the additional feature of heart-rate monitor. Not only it has smaller form-factor, it can be worn as a normal wrist-watch to display time if we disable the GPS functionality. And it retains all the important features that the previous model has! Cool!

Garmin Forerunner 405 :-

But my Forerunner 205 is still in tip-top condition and never missed a beat when locked to signals under clear sky. I may sell it off cheap. Any taker? J