I bought a new gadget yesterday - a GPS watch with HRM. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time. Last weekend, I planned to ride with the local mountain biking group (find the link at bikeloft.com) on trails that I've never understood in all the years I've been riding here. My plan was to ride with the group (usually 2 hours or so), log the data and pour over the maps at home. In the end, it didn't pan idea. But it got me fired up to find a tool for that job.
I've been using a gps utility for the cell phone since last summer (http://www.bimactive.com/) which has the fatal drawback that my phone battery only lasts about 90 minutes when the GPS is enabled. So, I lose the data for my longer runs and rides. Other than that, I really liked the service, it was easy to use and I liked the website, the limited analysis tools were just what I wanted and the ability to export to google maps format was great. I also like the cell phone because I usually carry it with me, so it's not another thing.
But I wanted to be able to go longer and still track the data, so I bought the newest GPS watch from Garmin. I picked Garmin becuase of the name. My impression is that they are a popular producer of consumer GPS receivers. I also had a bias that I wanted to buy it from my local running store (http://www.fleetfeetsyracuse.com/) and they carry Garmin.
I've used Polar HRM's forever, and if Fleet Feet carried them, I might have gone with Polar's offering. I've had my Polar 625i for about 2 years now. It's been very reliable and they have an awesome training diary for the PC. It gives you lots of ways to look at the HR data. I'm a little sorry to have a disconnect from that data.
So, as soon as the store opened yesterday, I got there and bought the Garmin forerunner 405 with HRM. I raced home and plugged it in, the called Greg and said I could leave the house in 3 hours (that's how long it takes to charge the watch).
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