Having abandoned treadmill running in favour of the great outdoors it wasn’t long before I began to bemoan the loss of my preferred running watch the Garmin Forerunner 305. I long for pretty maps to illustrate my outdoor running routes and spur me on to explore my surroundings and for that you need GPS.
Fortunately for me I am spoilt, and my good lady wife didn’t listen to my moans for long before coming home with a beautiful orange gift – the Garmin Forerunner 310XT.
The Forerunner 310XT has been the long awaited upgrade to the Forerunner 305. The Forerunner 405 (reviewed here) let us down with it’s silly bevel features that went haywire at the first hint of moisture, so the Forerunner 310XT marks a back to basics approach, stick with the tried, tested and much loved functionality of the 305 but add the long called for water resistance that should mark this as the triathletes choice.
Not of course that I can call myself a triathlete having done only one sprint event about 3 whole years ago. I am occasionally known to dabble in open water swimming though, or at least I have done twice, but I don’t think one should limit oneself, who knows when I may decide to pull on the wetsuit and explore the local waterways.
So the biggest change between the Forerunner 305 and the Forerunner 310XT is that Garmin have made the 310XT waterproof and therefore suitable for the swim. Having looked into the watches swim capabilities though I think I understand why Garmin took their time to introduce the feature and make a truly triathlon oriented GPS watch.
If you wear the watch on your wrist, as most people do, the watch will be plunged under water with each stroke reducing and possibly even removing its connection with the satellites and the stroke action will have the wrist unit moving forwards and back and effectively mapping out a greater distance than the rest of your body. The result is a very messy GPS trail and a wildly overestimated swim distance. A firmware release has added open-swim functionality to the Forerunner 310XT which averages out the missed points and gives a smoother GPS and distance closer to the truth but still not what you could call accurate.
DC Rainmaker has written an excellent review of the Forerunner 310XT as it performs in open water and compared the results with that of the Forerunner 305 worn underneath the swim cap.
I recommend you check out his analysis if you intend to use the watch for swimming or triathlon. The point I’ve taken away is that the 310XT really needs to be worn under your swim cap if you want to be able to trust the data and get a pretty map. It doesn’t show any improvements over the Forerunner 305 which you can shove in a sandwich bag and also pop under your swim cap but I suppose it does offer some peace of mind in case you drop it and it gets waterlogged.
Another major change is related to battery life. You can now run or swim or bike for around 20 hours vs the 10 hrs quoted for the 305. This is great news for endurance athletes or indeed anyone who can’t be bothered to charge the unit after each use. I have noticed a reduction in the data recording options though and wonder if this has gone someway to improving the battery life. With the 305 you could select the data recording option to every second or every 4 seconds with the “Smart Recording” option. With the 310XT the option has gone and now you only have smart recording. This isn’t really a problem for me although I do notice the charted data is a little less granular than it was in the 305 and it’s always nice to have the choice.
As with the Forerunner 405, the 310Xt is ANT enabled which means you get the automatic upload of workout data using the ANT stick and it means that the watch is compatible with assorted ANT devices such as cycle power meters. I don’t have one of these but I’m sure if you did, you’d be very happy with the enhancement. If you want to use the watch as your main cycle computer it is worth investing in the optional quick release kit, which is relatively cheap.
I’ve paired my unit with the ANT footpod that came with my Garmin FR60 but you could also pair it with the Adidas footpod that comes with the miCoach if you happen to have one. You can set the 310XT to use the footpod for distance measurements if you are running inside or on a treadmill or leave it set on GPS in which case the footpod will be used to measure cadence only.
I’ve been using mine mostly on the run and have noticed a few other improvements:
Physically the wrist unit is smaller and sleeker and is of course orange. It picks up GPS signals very quickly and seems to hold onto them, so despite running in wooded areas I haven’t noticed any spurious results on my map output. The unit is easier to use with less delving into menu systems required. For example if I want to switch from bike to run I just press and hold the mode button for about 3 seconds and it pops up the option to select the sport.
The multisport function has been improved as well. You can set up in advance the different stages of your race eg. Swim, T1, Bike 1, T2, Run and then when you press the lap button it automatically moves you into the next sport mode.
As with the 405 you can change the pace of your Virtual Partner on the fly. Press the up or down for a second and then you can slow the little stick man down long enough for you to be able to overtake him. Perfect, but perhaps shouldn’t be used too often.
A number of features are common to both the 305 and 310XT but I’ve noticed improvements to the “Back to Start” and the alert features.
If you want alerts you can choose to have sound or vibration or both. The vibration is particularly strong and sends ripples up your arm to ensure you don’t miss your lap times or interval notifications.
The Back to Start feature is very useful if you run on unfamiliar routes. It effectively lays out a bread crumb trail for you to retrace your steps with. When I used it the other weekend, I was trying to get back to my car which was who knows where. I’d gone a little bit around the houses and didn’t want to literally retrace my steps so I ignored the first turn off and headed back to an earlier point in the route. I was impressed to note that the watch forgave me and soon started picking up its directional instructions, buzzing at me when it was time to left or right. I don’t remember this being a feature of the 305.
So here’s my assessment.
Pro’s and Con’s
Pros
1. Small, pretty and new
2. Waterproof
3. Longer battery life – 20 hrs vs 10 hrs
4. Better GPS reception
5. ANT enabled which allows for wireless syncing, footpod pairing and power sensor compatibility
6. Back to start routing available – Included with 305 but not 405
Cons 1. Not really a swim watch – it still needs to sit in the swim cap
2. A lot more expensive than the 305 which currently retails at amazon for less than £140: Garmin Forerunner 305 with Heart Rate Monitor
I’ve got a lot of pro’s there but then I like shiny new things and I didn’t have to pay for it. I have to say though that I am a bit disappointed about the swim functionality, I can see that it’s a tricky concept to engineer but I’m paying a lot for it over and above the price of the 305.
If you are a cyclist and want to use the power meter features then I think you would be happy with the 310XT, if you are a regular swimmer you may settle for the safety aspect of having a waterproof item even if you do have to wear it in your swim cap.
If you are a runner and don’t have need to record workouts in excess of 10 hours, I think you may want to take advantage of the reduction in price of the Forerunner 305 and spend the money you save on a swanky pair of Vibram Five Fingers or some such.
I’ve tried out a few of the gadgets head to head but have now come to the conclusion that my Adidas foot pod does not respond well when it is in the heel recess of the specially adapted Adidas shoes.
Yesterday I headed to the incredibly soggy climes of Mitcham Common for my run and had to move the foot pod to my sturdy Salomon GTX trainers, using the lace clip. This time the pacer recorded a much lower distance than the Nike+ but at least the pace chart proved to be realistic.
As both Adidas and the Garmin FR60 use ANT technology I was able to pair the miCoach pacer with the Garmin foot pod, which is great news as at least I know this one works and it means I can get the best of both worlds – instant visual feedback of pace, distance and time from my wrist watch and the vocal instruction and motivation from the miCoach pacer. The heart rate monitors are interchangeable as well as they also use ANT.
Today I took the Adidas miCoach and Garmin FR60 combination out on a familiar old haunt around the Chiswick and Barnes Bridge loop of the Thames. I wish I’d stuck with the off-roading trainers – my shiny white Adidas shoes haven’t been enhanced by their trip through the Thames.
I’m fairly sure this is a 3.5 km loop give or take a few metres, according to many GPS recordings taken over the years and both gadgets came close enough to keep me happy without the need to calibrate.
Now I’m happy with the accuracy and the set-up, I can just concentrate on picking up for my fitness for the Great North Run.
I step out of my door and find myself mid way up the Col du Norbury. The hill has already wrecked my bike and now it has scuppered my first miCoach assessment.
The assessment requires you to start walking and then gradually work your way up the effort scale from 4 to 9. 9 being just shy of a myocardial infarction. With this hill I have to pop glyceryl trinitrate under my tongue within about 10 secs and my heart rate profile shows the undesired angina spike.
So the assessment was unsuccessful in amending my heart rate zones and I had to stick with the default settings for Day 1 of the “Be Fit” plan.
This was an interval session, requiring me to move through Blue, Green and Yellow zones. As you can see from the workout chart I really struggled to hit the easy effort blue zone. The hill broke me to start with but even on the flat I found I had to walk quite slowly to get my heart rate low enough to keep the posh lady happy.
Yesterday I went to the gym to work through a second assessment workout under the controlled conditions of the treadmill. That resulted in a successful output and my zones have now been amended to something more useful. Blue zone has been increased by about 10 bpm and hopefully that will enable me to actually run in my next workout – we’ll see tomorrow.
Both Garmin and Adidas claim that the foot pod sensor is somewhere close to 97 – 98% accurate out of the box.
I’m wearing the miCoach pod within a specially designed cavity in the Adidas Ride shoe which should ensure it is optimally placed for accuracy, but something is going wrong somewhere. The treadmill recorded a distance of 1.2km versus the miCoach pacer recorded distance of 1.6km. That is a huge discrepancy but as yet I don’t know if the treadmill is dodgy or the miCoach sensor.
I have 3 other foot pod running gadgets available (Garmin Forerunner FR60 and Nike+ Sportband) so tomorrow I put them head to head in a distance comparison. Of course that won’t enable to see which is the most accurate unless I run them on a reliably known distance (like one of those grotty running tracks) but it will give me an idea of the variation. Perhaps then I can schedule in a long overdue visit to the Wimbledon Park Run to calibrate it against the 5km route.
Adidas invited me and a few other bloggers (Big Runner and Running Matters) to try out their recent entrant into the sports gadget market – the miCoach pacer. On Thursday evening I arrived at the Millenium Arena in Battersea Park ready for the presentation. I began to sweat almost immediately as I spotted the running track and sporty types. I haven’t been near a running track since the humiliation of 1984 – where I was the pitiful fat kid in the schools sports day and found myself lapped umpteen times, over the 1500m distance – I don’t like running tracks.
Back to miCoach though, I heard of it a while ago in connection with a Samsung mobile phone but they’ve now branched out and produced a very capable standalone system. In brief its a coaching system based on heart rate zones. They appear to have two systems on offer, the miCoach zone at £70 and the miCoach pacer at £120. The zone offering consists of a heart rate monitor and a bracelet that displays the coloured zone you are in, I haven’t tried this out but it seems pretty pointless to me. The miCoach pacer on the other hand is very interesting. It consists of a foot pod, heart rate monitor and a little electronic “thingy” for want of a better word. The thingy or pacer stores your workout details, both scheduled and completed and relays a series of instructions via the included headphones.
It’s the verbal instructions that set the adidas system apart from its competitors (ie. Garmin and Nike+). While Garmin and Nike offer systems that record workout details, Adidas have opted to focus on the training plan. The miCoach is aimed at the recreational runner who isn’t fortunate enough to have a personal running coach.
The Adidas website is very accomplished and offers a wide range of training plans, such as preparing to race, improving race time, losing weight etc. I’m quite a way off my next planned event – the Great North Run in Sept so I’ve set myself off on the “Be Fit” plan and will progress to the half marathon schedule in early summer.
The idea of the pacer is that it syncs with your online training plan and stores your scheduled workouts in its memory ready to relay to you on your run. The instructions are based around four coloured heart rate zones:
Blue – Easy Effort
Green – Medium Effort
Yellow – Hard Effort
Red – Maximal Effort
So a typical session might see the pacer instructing you to run in Blue zone for 2 mins before increasing to green zone for the duration and then ending in a cool down back in blue.
I have a very well spoken English lady talking to me and I think she has the level of interruption to my general thought process sorted. She gives me my instruction clearly then only butts back in to tell me that I’ve hit the relevant zone and need to maintain or to encourage me to either up or decrease the pace as appropriate. If I need more feedback I can press the central button on the pacer and she will inform me of pace, heart rate, distance etc.
The actual presentation event from Adidas was fairly disastrous. There were probably 15 people trying out the kit and almost all of us had a problem with the sensors failing to pick up. Seriously embarrassing for a product launch but I was decidedly grateful. I did one lap of the dreaded track and then got to quit as the gadget wasn’t working – result!
I had another go the next evening but the sensors still wouldn’t pick up. I have a feeling that the assorted parts got muddled up during setup and paired with the wrong pacers for the presentation day because it worked absolutely fine after I re-paired the sensors and pacer.
Part of the set up process required me to enter personal details such as height and weight. The weighing scales have been out of action for about a month so I haven’t been keeping an eye on myself. Hunting out new batteries revealed the full horror of a month long slide – 6 whole lbs of bad news.
The shock was so great that despite me being two cans of Stella down and it being just past bed time, I strapped the new gadget on and went out for the 12 minute assessment run round the mean streets of SW London.
**There is a link to my other product reviews on sidebar. Please contact me at angela@warriorwomen.co.uk if you have a product you would like me to review.
I can get over the treadmill boredom frontier by sticking a gruesome thriller on the iPod but the absence of a reliable data capture device (or sports watch) could call the end to a beautiful gym relationship membership.
I’ve worked my way through a number of fancy running watches over the years but my latest, the Forerunner 405 (reviewed May 2008) was just not designed to be a gym bunny buddy. Fortunately the Garmin Forerunner FR60 was released earlier in the year and appeared to be just what I required.
In summary, it’s a footpod/HR monitor which is ANT enabled meaning you can wirelessly upload data and connect to other ANT enabled equipment such as gym machines and the fancy new BC1000 Tanita weighing scales.
Unlike most of the others in the forerunner series, this watch does not have GPS, it is waterproof though.
I’ve had a few footpod watches before, including the Nike+, Polar 725 and Polar RS200SD and I’ve been impressed with all of them. In most cases they have proved to be accurate out of the box without the need for calibration and are ready for action from the moment you put the watch into training mode so there is no need to hang around stretching out your hamstrings while you wait for a the GPS unit to lock onto a satellite signal.
The footpod speed and distance monitors also have a huge advantage over GPS when it comes to monitoring pace. Pace readings on GPS units have a tendency to fluctuate all over the place while the footpod units prove to be more stable and therefore more reliable in any given instance.
What the footpods lack when compared to their bigger GPS brothers, is the ability to create lovely map trails of where you’ve been. GPS makes you feel like an adventurer, an explorer of uncharted tracks, but let’s face it, GPS isn’t for everyone.
If you run the same few routes over and over again the joy of the GPS map soon begins to wane and if like me, you spend a good proportion of your time on the treadmill, the GPS output would result in a terribly unsatisfying mess centred above your gym coordinates.
Garmin Forerunner FR60 in Action – Screenshots
Here’s a few shots of the Garmin FR60 as I move through the history screens for one workout. The final image shows the virtual partner screen which is one of the view options while training.
Garmin FR60 Compared to Nike+ and Polar
Nike+
The Nike+ wrist unit offers an accurate footpod with a minimal design. It’s ideal for social networking as it makes it so easy to upload stats via twitter, facebook and assorted other widgets. It’s the cheapest option as well but I can’t help finding it a bit disappointing, I just can’t stand the cartoon style display of the stats.
Polar
I really loved the RS200SD, the display was brilliant and the history data lent itself perfectly for being transferred to a training log. It has now been superseded by the Polar RS300X and I was momentarily tempted by it until I started pricing up the extras. The really annoying feature of Polar is that they require you to buy all the necessary attachments separately. The ridiculous “flowlink” is required for uploading data to the web but costs £49.99 whereas Garmin include their usb ANT connectivity stick in the box along with the watch.
Garmin
Garmin has the edge over the competition, everything is supplied in the box and the connection is relatively straightforward.
Having uploaded the data it is easy to import the data files into sporttracks or other training logs.
**There is a link to my other product reviews on sidebar. Please contact me at angela@warriorwomen.co.uk if you have a product you would like me to review.
June 22, 2009 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event
Call that a bike ride….?
At one point I thought we were actually going to be walking all the way to Brighton.
Experienced L2B’ers had warned me to start the event early but I’m too lazy to get up for a 6am start. I may have had a leisurely 8:30am kick off but I very quickly regretted it. We just never seemed to get going. We crawled through Tooting and Mitcham and out towards the M25 and 3 hours and 20 mins later the garmin beeped to tell me we had just about escaped London.
3 hours and 20 minutes with a bike and we’d only travelled 19 miles and what’s more we were walking already.
The very first sign of an incline and the whole pedal pumping mass ground to a complete standstill. There was no room to weave in and out so everyone one from lycra clad mountain goats to mums on old shoppers had to dismount and walk.
Given the rather lame nature of the incline it was disheartening to say the least. I’m the worlds slowest runner but yesterday I barely managed to cycle above my half marathon pace.
I think there were something like 4 or 5 hillocks marked on the route map and all were fairly inconsequential except for the final horror – Ditchling Beacon.
The crowds must have thinned at some point because I did manage to get back on the bike and for a few brief miles I actually felt the wind in my face and enjoyed the freedom of a crazy hell for leather descent.
The route, which I’ll illustrate when I’ve got it uploaded, had the potential to be a really enjoyable jaunt into Brighton. Apart from the few little bumps that I’ve already belittled it felt like a 54 mile descent to the sea. There was a heck of a lot of high speed freewheeling to be done but I suppose sharing country lanes with 27,000 other cyclists was never going to feel much better than getting stuck behind a convoy of caravans on a bank holiday exodus from Bridlington.
Ditcling Beacon arrived eventually and the one time I hoped for a blockade of walkers, so I could just excuse myself from the trouble of attempting the ascent, they all appeared to have adopted the “walkers to the left” etiquette. There was a clearish path up and I had to attempt it. I didn’t get too far up though before I lost my rhythm bobbing in and out of bailing bikers and I joined them. It was a tough long walk up so I can only imagine it was a challenging ride.
From this vantage point I could see the sea and Dave said he could smell the pier. I thought he said, “Can you smell the beer?” and I actually thought I could. It gave me a little burst of joy and I blasted my way down onto the slip road into the town and didn’t rest until I found myself with beer and chips in hand.
Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t run an awful lot of late, in fact if you want to be reasonably precise, I have run only once in the last month, which also happens to equate to once this year. How neat.
If we want to be 100% precise it could be argued that I’ve run a few more times than I’ve let on, for example, I may have attempted the occassional dash to the bus away from work and I sprinted to the train station last night after my blood doning session but all in all the consequences were ugly and should remain hidden from public conciousness.
I feel like I’m taking confession and will have to start with the hail Mary’s soon but in my defence, I do have some excuses.
For one thing, as the last two months of my fairly sparse blog writing will attest, I am far too happy for running. Running appeals to the miserable side of me, it’s the perfect alternative to a pack of Benson and Hedges and bottle of JD. Mind you it also appeals to the exceptionally jolly side of me as well, so maybe that’s not such a good excuse after all.
Secondly, and this one has to be foolproof, I’m working on a ridiculous placement that means I have to travel between 4 and 5 hours every day.
Not a chance that I feel like running after all that nonsense.
Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I have secured myself a proper job, midway between happiness and home and I forsee many exciting new routes ahead of me, incorporating the best of London’s seedy commons and the highly rated Wandle trail. Expect updates of the running variety in March.
In the mean time, what better way to spend one’s non-running time, than by analysing data from runs gone by?
RunSaturday is new website stacked full of new and intriguing ways to analyse data held across multiple sites and generated by multiple gadgets. I’ve been able to bring together runs from my Garmin Forerunner 405, Nike+, Nokia Sportstracker along with all my historical runs stored on SportsTracks. I can also bring in runs manually entered onto Fetcheveryone and analyse my stats from the Saturday morning 5k park runs.
All this makes RunSaturday the most comprehensive database of my running shame prowess, which is quite a lot of fun because the site provides loads of ways to share the data across social websites such as facebook and personal blogs.
Here’s a particularly ancient route showing the mammoth run/walk I did along the Capital Ring. If you click on the heart symbol you’ll see a colour coded route indicating the specific heart rate zones during the run. You can see similar images for speed but as I’m a one speed wonder you’ll have to upload your own interval workouts to see rainbows in this feature.
There seem to be loads of new features coming along, so I’d recommend checking it out for yourself. I’ll add more images from the site just as soon I manage another run but don’t hold your breath til March.
**There is a link to my other product reviews on sidebar. Please contact me at angela@warriorwomen.co.uk if you have a product you would like me to review.
December 24, 2008 at 3:08 pm · Filed under Running
The non-runner dragged me out on another run this Saturday, and I mean literally dragged. I clung on to her belt for dear life as she tried to master pace setting on the bike. It’s obviously fairly tricky cycling at my running pace and more practice is clearly required. I’m pretty sure that we hit the giddy heights of 8 minute miles on some of the down hill sections. I couldn’t verify it on the garmin as any downward glances were destined to lead to messy “running shoe – in – bike spoke – acrobatics”.
It gave my lungs an unaccustomed workout though and my legs couldn’t believe what was happening to them.
By Monday the legs were moaning in that positively satisfying, muscle torn way. Every time I had to stand up I’d feel a rush of self-satisfaction and accept another Quality Street, safe in the knowledge that I jolly well deserved it.
That got me thinking today. How much better would Christmas feel if I dragged myself up on Chrimble morn to feel the achy thighs of a self-righteous, long distance, runner? I could hobble down stairs and start on the nuts from the crack of dawn and not even feel a hint of guilt at my festive excesses. Excellent plan. So I headed out this morning for quickish pootle along the river to M&S to buy nuts. At 2 miles it perhaps doesn’t count as a long distance run but I’m hoping I did it fast enough for my legs to ache and provide the necessary sacrifice for bone-fide excess offsetting.
This run was always going to be a bit hit and miss, booking two half marathons only 7 days apart and then going light on the training regime is only going to end in a world of pain.
In my mind I thought it would be interesting to see just how much pain would actually be involved – I was beginning to see it as an experiment in muscle damage.
Three days after the Great North Run I was still hobbling up the stairs and trying to recapture my youth sliding down the the bannisters. By Friday though I was able to move around without squealing and began to think this race might be a possibility afterall.
I arrived in Hyde Park to welcome a glorious autumnal morning and the classiest event set up I’ve ever witnessed. There was a farmers market in the event village complete with a wet fish stall and fresh bread counter. Someone tried to hand me a free sample of curry sauce and I was seriously tempted to quit the race and enjoy the grub.
Still unsure of my strategy for this event I propped myself against a tree and started reading through some outstanding blog posts. Speedracer happened to be deciding her strategy for running a marathon on an injured foot but as ever, her approach was gonna prove just a little too hardcore for me. Crippling yourself for two weeks is a step too far in my book, laying myself off work for a couple of days however, sounds much more like my cuppa tea. I did agree that hitting the finish line in 5 hours was going to be a waste of time though, I wouldn’t mind running over the line in 3:30 but if I had to walk, I wasn’t going to be interested.
I started running to Amy MacDonald and finally hit on the perfect motto for the event “I will run until my feet no longer run no more”.
Sorted!
It was a beautiful route, any event that forces street closures through central London has got to score brownie points. There is simply no better place to run. I was a bit worried to note that the route left the streets and headed into Hyde Park at mile 6 though. 7.1 miles looping around Hyde park was going to be a challenge.
At mile 3 my thighs started screaming in a mile 10 sort of fashion. This was going to be some battle of wills. I ran past 3 tube stations and tapped my pocket each time just to confirm that my emergency “get me out of here” oyster card was handy, but ran on regardless.
My energy was sapped at Hyde park, knowing I had more than 10k to go on familiar ground. Spectators and general park goers were getting fed up of the spectacle and started ignoring the fact that a race was in progress. I had to duck and dive through crowds and hop over extender leads as dog owners gave their stoopid poodles full reign.
There were 12500 runners in this event, almost a quarter that of the Great North, as a result, slow runners were a bit thin on the ground. In fact I seemed to be surrounded by those goddamn walkers. Run/walkers and just plain ole walkers. They were overtaking me on the hills again and was I being driven nuts.
At the 10th mile I actually stopped to walk just to see if perhaps it would be quicker that way, but no, I was even slower. At 11 miles something happened with my legs and the running got so slow I couldn’t even claim to be moving forward anymore, the garmin showed the damage – I’d lost a 6 minute advantage in the last 2 miles and my pace was well over 15 min miles. I walked off the edge and promptly threw up in the hedges.
Garmin stopped and I quit. My first DNF.
All I had left to do was join the dots.
I’m not too bothered by the failure, I wanted to see the affect on my body and I also wanted to know if I could persuade OGB and Tanya to substitute this event for GNR next year. It will be considerably cheaper.
In my opinion this is by far the better route, it was pretty well organised and had deluxe portaloos but the crowds were not a patch on the tyneside guys who truly know how to support crap runners. If you were further up the pack I don’t think you would have been tripped up by so many dog walkers.
I spotted JogBlog a few miles ahead of me but she’s been a bit slack with the race update. That’s the trouble with completing races – you get to nurse a legitimate hangover for hours whereas DNF’ers got to go home for a sober bath! Not the way forward.
Saturday evening, after entertaining my family with a slightly charred roast lamb joint but a perfectly acceptable bottle of vino (or two), I get an email from Nike. Apparently, if I could resurrect the long dead Nike+ Sportband, and push my sorry arse out of the door, complete with Sunday morning hangover, to complete a 10k of my choosing, I would soon be the proud owner of a freebie Nike Humanrace t-shirt.
Hard to resist a freebie t-shirt, so I left my visitors to rustle up their own breakfast and arranged to meet them in Kew Gardens approx 1hrs 20mins later.
Lovely day for running, providing you don’t have a pointy head or too much body jewellery.
I have a particularly round head and enjoy running through electrical storms and downpours but I was surprised to see quite so many other water babies running along the river. I searched for signs of commitment to the global humanrace but saw none, it seems that some folk don’t need freebies to run.
3 months on the sub-bench allowed the Nike+ Sportband to dry out sufficiently for me to read the screen again, but I thought it prudent to spin the screen round to the underside of my wrist to provide a little water protection. Pity I didn’t do the same for the garmin forerunner 405!
A few weeks ago I had a comment on my forerunner 405 review, warning me of short-circuiting type responses when the garmin bezel gets wet. Apparently a few reviewers had commented on the bezel bleeping and flicking through screens randomly when exposed to water or sweat. I was quick to reject that the forerunner 405 had a problem but I should have kept my mouth shut.
Running through this downpour left my watch bleeping like crazy as I tried to stop the timer and move it off the training mode. In the end I had to wait for it to run out of battery life to switch off. Serious design flaw here.
I’ve had the forerunner 405 for a few months now and as it’s pretty much rained non-stop throughout the whole of summer, I find it hard to believe that I didn’t notice the problem earlier. I’m wondering if it could possibly be related to the recent firmware I downloaded – doesn’t really sound like a software issue but I’ve upgraded to the latest update just in case.
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!
Fortunately for me I am spoilt, and my good lady wife didn’t listen to my moans for long before coming home with a beautiful orange gift – the Garmin Forerunner 310XT.
Another major change is related to battery life. You can now run or swim or bike for around 20 hours vs the 10 hrs quoted for the 305. This is great news for endurance athletes or indeed anyone who can’t be bothered to charge the unit after each use. I have noticed a reduction in the data recording options though and wonder if this has gone someway to improving the battery life. With the 305 you could select the data recording option to every second or every 4 seconds with the “Smart Recording” option. With the 310XT the option has gone and now you only have smart recording. This isn’t really a problem for me although I do notice the charted data is a little less granular than it was in the 305 and it’s always nice to have the choice.
