A GPS on Every Wrist …

So after seeing how cool my friend Gary’s new Garmin Forerunner 305 is for tracking training (I hesitate to add the term “athletic” to the pathetic excuse for training that I do), I ordered one for myself. I’ve only had the chance to use it on two muni rides so far (meant to go for a run this morning, but forgot about an appointment I had with my insurance agent). You wear the thing like a rather unwieldy wristwatch (although it’s not heavy by any means), and it tracks your distance, speed, and heart-rate. What’s really cool, though, is that when you click it into its little charging station, it uploads your data to your PC, where it shows you all sorts of cool stuff. It will make a little map of where you went, and chart all sorts of info–like your speed and heart-rate, or elevation, or about anything else you choose. 

But here’s what I’ve noticed about going for a ride with that puppy: I work harder. I don’t want to see my lazy ass resting when I look at the training results. But I also noticed that I spend too much time with my heart rate at around 180 or higher, which I suspect is probably too high for a man of my advanced age and weight. But maybe that’s just the glory of muni, as opposed to other kinds of exercise. I’ll try to run tomorrow and see what the results look like. I’m still working on figuring out the easiest way to upload to MotionBased, a website hosted by Garmin, that allows one to share results online. I’ll start tweeting those once I get them up and running. 

January 21 2009 09:36 pm | cycling

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