I’m not really one for gadgets as a rule. As a runner there’s not much in the way of gadgets to get excited about and even though there is in cycling and triathlon I’ve never really fallen into the ‘gadget trap’. I don’t even own a smart phone…
Until now that is. I am now the proud owner of a Garmin Forerunner 110 – the very poor relation (if you believe the running/tri forums) of the Garmin family but personally I think it’s pretty fab! I quite like stats from training and races and have spent many an hour on MapMyRun trying to work out distances and average speeds/paces.
With marathon training in full swing I’ve spent some time working out what training plan to follow and what speeds need to be done at what point and for how long over what distance so I finally came round to the fact that a GPS watch might actually be worth having. My initial thoughts were of the Timex Global Trainer. As an owner of a Timex Ironman watch it seemed the logical progression – until I saw how big it was – It would be like running with a saucer attached to my wrist – not very cool and with prices coming in at £300 I’d be scared to wear it.
So I started to look a bit further down the tree and stumbled across the Garmin 110. It looked simple – average speed, distance and how long – oh and it also tells the time! Due to a timely cracking deal from Sweatshop Mr Chips bought me it as a belated birthday present.
First wear today and although I spent a lot of the run looking at the watch I was pretty impressed. It is useful to see what your actual pace is at any point in time and the GPS meant I could just run a random route knowing that when I reached my 5 mile limit I could just slow down and jog back to work. Sorted!
runwithchips 