As I alluded to at the end of last year, I’ve bought a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS fitness watch which has now been in possession for a couple of dozen workouts. The thing is brilliant. Combined with a heart rate monitor (included), it will log every important facet of your running, cycling, or other distance-vs-time workouts.

Here’s some assorted statistics from my workouts so far:

Running:

• Workouts: 15
• Total distance: 89.36km
• Average distance: 5.96km
• Average speed: 11.27km/h
• Maximum speed: 24.9km/h
• Average heart rate: 156.33 beats per minute
• Total elevation gain: 3484 metres
• Average elevation gain: 232.27 metres

Cycling:

• Workouts: 7
• Total distance: 93.6km
• Average distance: 13.37km
• Average speed: 21.66km/h
• Maximum speed: 53.1km/h
• Average heart rate: 151.43 beats per minute
• Total elevation gain: 2051 metres
• Average elevation gain: 293 metres

From an individual workout point-of-view, here’s a few examples of the data yielded from one of my cycles a few weeks ago.

As you can see, the data is reasonably comprehensive, including things like heart rate, elevation changes, pace, distance and time. The watch records this information every four seconds I believe, which results in some really good data.

It’s all quite intriguing stuff, because as well as tracking progress with real statistical accuracy, you can use it to identify weaknesses. Comparing speed, distance and elevation may illustrate a specific difficulty with hills of a certain grade or length, for example, and you could use this information to make training decisions.

I’m not quite serious enough to worry about any in-depth analysis, however, but I am definitely enjoying the logging functionality. It’s going to be interesting to compare workouts this time next year.

If you’re after one of these watches in New Zealand, they are available online from Bay Marine Electronics amongst other places. The price at time of writing is a rather hefty $439; but if you’re a regular runner with a mind for statistics, I don’t think you’ll regret it.