I’ve been hitting the Danville walking trails during my lunch hour for around six weeks now. This entire time, I’ve been using my iPhone and the Endomondo app to track my time and distance. I did notice some pretty major flaws working with Endomondo. One day, it had tracked me as having run 22 miles in around 35 minutes. Most days, it was steady at 2.25 miles in the 35ish minutes that it takes me to run the course. It was also reporting an average of 635 calories burned each day that I ran. I accepted averages as truth and just deleted workouts in which I could have held my own against the Flash.
On Tuesday, I received my first sports tracker watch, a Garmin Forerunner 35, which I ordered after completing my first 5K on March 25. Setup was quick and easy. It synced with my iPhone flawlessly, and was able to connect to Facebook and My Fitness Pal, the app I use to track my calories, exercise, and water intake. Brilliance! The Garmin 35 even transferred my current weight from My Fitness Pal and calculated my BMI. I entered my goal weight into the Garmin manually. I also entered my normal bed time and wake up time so that the Garmin could track my sleep patterns. I’m pretty impressed already charged the watch to a full charge and messed around with the new Garmin Connect app that I downloaded onto my phone.
I took it out for a test run on Tuesday at lunch time. I ran my normal course, and found that my distance and time weren’t as accurate as I had hoped. For the exact same course I run day after day, I found that instead of the 2.25 miles that I normally track, it was only 2.2 miles. I also learned that the number of calories I burned was only 376 compared to the 635 I’d been logging. Oh well, everything I did before the Garmin still counts for something.
I did manage a new personal best on my run. I ran the entire 2.2 miles without a walk break. That is the farthest distance that I have managed to date. I did run the last half of my first 5K, but that was only 1.5 miles. That is a .7 mile improvement!
A little about the Garmin Forerunner 35:
I purchased the unit on Amazon.com for $169.99, and it shipped for free because I am an Amazon Prime member. HERE IS THE LINK.
The features of the Garmin 35 are pretty cool. (These are taken from Amazon’s product page).
- Built-in GPS - built-in to acquire satellites quickly to track how far, how fast and where you run, even under tree cover. No phone required!
- 24/7 heart rate monitoring - warm gives you heart rate all day and night -no additional Strap required.
- Vibration alerts - helpful vibration alerts notify you of running prompts, activity tracking milestones, smart notifications and virtual pacing progress.
- Updated display - new high resolution display that is perfect for indoor/outdoor viewing.
- Smart connectivity - auto uploads, smart notifications, live track, music controls and automatic sw updates.
The Garmin Forerunner 35 also alerts me and displays text messages, Facebook notifications, and even emails from work that come through the Blackberry Work app. I LOVE THIS FEATURE!
Here are a few screen shots from the Garmin Connect app, which syncs with the watch.
I want to mention that I have not been paid, and have not received any merchandise for this review. I purchased this watch on my own and love it, and I just want to share my experience with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment