Well aren’t I a lucky boy?

I knew full well that I was going to start training for the London Marathon in January. So, preparing to beg a little, I asked for a GPS running watch for Christmas. I knew instantly which make I wanted. Garmin seems to have the market cornered on this type of technology. Sure there are plenty of sat nav systems out there for your car. But trying to get one small enough to fit on your wrist is a challenge.

Having seen a fellow runner’s Garmin, I knew what I wanted my watch to do. I wanted a breakdown of my runs after I’d been on them. So, the distance I’d travelled, the route I took, the time I ran it in and, if possible, my split times.

I initially looked at the Garmin Forerunner 305. The price was a little lower than the latest model and it did everything I wanted it to. But when Santa went to get it for me, he must have been worried about my street cred. The watch is apparently quite large; not dissimilar to having a calculator strapped to your wrist.

So there it was, my new Garmin Forerunner 405. In the box was the watch, a heart rate monitor, a USB ‘ANT Stick’ and a charging clip. The watch still looked quite bulky to me and there’s an extended portion to the south of the face that makes the watch quite lengthy before the flexible strap allows it to curl around your wrist. But it is by no means restrictive and, when you learn that that this is designed so that the antenna is constantly pointing up at the sky to get better satellite reception, you quickly forgive the shape.

The fun stuff happens on your first run. Once you’ve acquired your satellites, hit the start button and you’re off. You can then view your progress in one of three ways:

1. With your time, pace and distance all on one screen.
2. With your current heart rate.
3. Or with your progress against a virtual partner.

And that’s the beauty of this watch. Say you want to run the marathon in under 4 hours (a little over 9 minutes a mile). Simply set your virtual partner to run at 9 minute miles and go. The watch will tell you if you are behind or ahead of your little running partner so you can judge whether to speed up or if you can ease off a bit. Who needs a man with a balloon on his back?!

Once you’re back (and you’ve installed the ‘ANT Stick’) just set your watch down next to your computer and watch it instantly transfer your run to your computer without you even pressing a button. It then displays your run using Google Maps, shows you how far it was, how many calories you’ve burned, your elevation gain and your mile split times. Check out this 15-miler I ran with the watch on. I didn’t use the heart rate monitor as I find that I can’t get the size quite right and it restricts my breathing.

I love the mapping function. I went out for a long run one morning and stupidly had a fry up before I left. You can actually see on the map the moment I couldn’t run any more and was stranded 4 miles from home! Click here for the ‘fry-up run‘. I also turned the watch on for 10 minutes during a 5-a-side football game. I could win some abstract art competition with that (hit ‘satellite’ above the map to see an aerial view)!

The downsides? Well I’m lucky that my birthday falls right next to Christmas. The watch was a joint birthday and Christmas present because of the price. A snip at RRP £259.99.

Long sleeve tops are another problem. Most menu functions are activated using a touch-sensitive bezel and a sweaty top brushing over the controls can change a few settings annoyingly easily. Also, if you’re a city runner, tall buildings can affect the accuracy of the watch. You can see in this run where I miraculously walked on water around the docks at Canary Wharf. To be fair, this is an area with three of the tallest buildings in the country so some disruption is to be expected.

All foibles aside, I couldn’t live without this watch now. It’s been fairly crucial in my marathon training and I’m getting some pretty decent times in my marathon training because I’m pushing myself a little bit further. 4 hours 45 minutes to beat this year. Lets see if this watch can help me do it.

6 Responses to “REVIEW: Garmin Forerunner 405”