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Running with the Garmin Forerunner

(in the spirit of “Running with the iPod“)

So I’ve had my Garmin Forerunner 201 for just about three weeks now, and I’ve had sufficient time to develop some impressions about it. In this post, I’ll talk a little bit about how the Garmin works, how I’ve used it, and the results I’ve seen. My goal with this is to provide just a little bit more information to anyone out there thinking of getting one (it’s always best to be as informed as possible, after all).

The Garmin Forerunner 201 is a GPS-based, wrist-worn speed and distance training tool. Essentially, you strap it on, power it up, wait for it to acquire a fix from a set of GPS satellites, and off you go. As you run, the Garmin shows you a subset of a qide variety of information - your current pace, the total distance you’ve traveled, time since your last lap, etc. Once you’re finished, the Garmin saves your training run in its onboard memory, along with up to two years of other runs. I’ll go into more detail on these and other features below.

First, though, a summary. All in all, the Garmin is a nifty little package. For those of us who are obsessed with measurement - how fast am I going? How far has I run? - it has the potential to be a godsend. It is not, however, flawless. My one complaint with it is just the inconsistency of the GPS function itself; my house is in a light-to-moderately wooded suburb of Washington, DC. If I’m running within a mile of the house, I have to wait at least three or four minutes to acquire the initial fix, and I’m bound to lose the fix at least half a dozen times over the course of a three mile run. When the Garmin loses its fix, it’ll keep timing you - but you lose the pace information and the constant updating of the distance info. When the fix is reacquired, the unit assumes you’ve travelled in a straight line from the last known point to the newly-found point and calculates your distance run accordingly - so if you’re on a twisty route, your distance will be noticeably underestimated.

I’ve gotten around this problem by just running elsewhere. My recent runs along the W&OD Trail, for instance, were prompted in part by the hope that my Garmin would be more reliable out there than it is in my neighborhood (it has been). Similarly, when I don’t have time to drive to the nearest trail crossing, I try to stick to less-wooded neighborhoods or bigger streets to maximize my signal strength. Aside from that one issue, I’m completely in love with the Garmin.

Why such strong feelings, you ask? Well, let me tell you about just a couple of the cooler functions I’ve played with (please note that this is far from an exhaustive list of the Garmin’s capabilities; I’ve only scratched the surface of the possible in the last few weeks, and I very much look forward to learning more in the upcoming months).

Auto-lap: The Garmin can record lap splits normally (with a dedicated button), or it can be set up to automatically record splits at certain distances. Mine’s set to start a new lap every mile, no matter how long it’s taken. It’s great to be able to run without having to worry about whether the splits are being recorded correctly.

Auto-pause: The Garmin can be set to automatically pause its timer if you slow beyond a certain point. Mine stops the timer if I go slower than 11:00 min/mile; I can stop for water, to tie a shoe, or walk for a minute and never worry about forgetting to restart my timer.

Oh, and the Garmin also keeps track of how long it stays paused and how far you travel during the pause.

Analysis: While the Garmin can store and recall up to two years of run data, the unit itself is not the only way to review your stored information. You can connect the Garmin to a PC via the included serial cable and import your data into the free software application called LogBook. Once your data’s in there, you can see the route you took on each run, how far you ran, your pace at each point along the way, the altitude changes you ran across - the whole kit and kaboodle of speed and distance analysis is at your fingertips. You can also export the data in XML format if you’d like to play with it on your own.

There are a ton of other features with the Garmin; from the Virtual Partner (set a target pace and see how well you fare against it), to standard GPS mapping functionality, to time and distance alerts - the Garmin is chock full of feature-y goodness. About the only thing I can say against it is that it doesn’t deal with tree cover all that well - but that’s going to be a problem for any GPS-based speed and distance device (Timex, anyone?). If you’re in a heavily-wooded area, then, I’d suggest you stay away from the Garmin. Otherwise, it’s definitely worth a look.

(Oh, and has anyone tried the inertial Polar S625X yet? I’d really be interested in hearing a comparison…)