I took my new toy for a run this morning: a Garmin 405 Forerunner. What a fantastic piece of technology.
Having had 2 days rest since running in Aurillac, I was very motivated this morning when the alarm rang at 7:00am and I leapt out of bed. I threw on my running gear, grabbed my new watch and ran outside. I had spent the previous night configuring my new toy so that it knew everything about me: my date of birth, my weight, my sex and even what I'd had for breakfast that morning. I'd studied the instructions very carefully, and already set the pace at 4:24 per km for my virtual training partner. It was therefore a little disappointing to wait for 2 minutes outside the house gates while the machine spoke to the 6 satellites in the sky necessary before I could set off. Fully synchronised, the watch informed me that it was ready and so off I trotted.
Having benefitted from 2 days rest, I was keen to see how well I'd progressed over a flat course following last week's hill training. A quick glance at the watch at the 2 km mark, as I pressed the lap time to record my position, showed that I was running at 4:09 pace and had been running for 8:30. The pace indicator was a little ambitious as my time showed. Others had already warned me that the speed or pace indicated is instantaneous and can vary significantly over a course due to the positioning error of up to 6 or 7m. I carried on regardless, just thinking that all of this technology was fantastic but that it actually didn't help my legs to move any faster.
I carried on through to the park and took my split at 6.5km: 27:45. I was feeling fairly good and the watch encouraged me to accelerate a little every time I thought I was slacking slightly. Next split at 8.3 km in 35:12 and I knew that I was a little behind my fastest time. Another acceleration and the downhill stretch before the final straight and the rise back home to finish in 46:39 for an average time per kilometre of 4:12 or speed of 14.2 km/h.
The watch is fabulous: 762 calories burned, height gained is wrong at 495m (I must need to set the parameters somewhere), splits with average speeds, etc. The options are limitless. I've even seen a section on setting up interval training with warm-up and warm-down, number of intervals and rest periods - just need to get the legs going to use the functions!
I'm now the running statistics king and have all the graphs to show you. What, you're not interested... some other time then.
Footing
10 years ago
2 comments:
Jamie, I'm extremely jealous. I told Kirsten only last week that I wanted a Garmin 405 for my birthday present and that she needed to order it now. Always fancied one but thought the 305 was too big. Hopefully you can be my troubleshooter when Kirst delivers...
Tom, bought it on e-bay in the States. You can but them direct from this supplier though, which I recommend as they were excellent from welcome to shipping etc. http://www.clevertraining.com/forerunner405.html
In fact, I bought 2 as I got one for Laurence with heart rate monitor.
I bought it too because of the size of the watch compared to the 305. It actually offers slightly fewer programmes than the 305 but already plenty for my needs. Fantastic piece of equipment. I'll let you know how reliable it is over the next few weeks. Mine already crashed last night as I was setting up the parameters and synchronising with the PC. Had to hard-reset to start again.
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