{"id":88,"date":"2008-07-10T08:40:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/2008\/07\/10\/garmin-forerunner-305\/"},"modified":"2008-07-10T08:40:38","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T12:40:38","slug":"garmin-forerunner-305","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/2008\/07\/10\/garmin-forerunner-305\/","title":{"rendered":"Garmin Forerunner 305"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started running this year and bought an iPod with Nike+ early on to <a href=\"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/2008\/02\/25\/use-your-ipod-nano-nike-to-track-mileage\/\">track my mileage<\/a>. I had some initial frustration with it, subsequently learned <a href=\"http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/2008\/03\/02\/how-to-hack-your-nano-nike-run-data-when-ipod-freezes\/\">how to hack it<\/a> to recover my run data, but for the most part, really love it. <\/p>\n<p>Then I became a bit more serious about my running &#8212; I&#8217;ve logged about 640 miles so far this year, have begun training for my second marathon, and recently ran my 6th race &#8212; so I started to get frustrated with the fact that the iPod with Nike+ wasn&#8217;t totally accurate in terms of distance and pace (I was calibrating often and it always seemed like it was either telling me I was running too far or not far enough; the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Accelerometer\">accelerometer<\/a> technology is cool, but not without fault).<\/p>\n<p>It was time for GPS &#8212; on my wrist:<\/p>\n<p><center><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/garmin-forerunner-305-gabe-wrist.jpg' alt='garmin-forerunner-305-gabe-wrist.jpg' \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>So I started doing some research and knew pretty quickly that I wanted a Garmin Forerunner. My buddy Alex, with whom I trained for the Rock &#8216;n Roll Marathon in San Diego, picked up the Forerunner 205 during our training, and loved it. Given that it&#8217;s GPS and all, we always used his watch to track our distance and pace vs. my iPod, which was pretty accurate, but not exact. <\/p>\n<p>The 205 is an older model and doesn&#8217;t have a heartrate monitor, which is something I was also curious about doing: Monitoring my heartrate while I run. So that narrowed it down to the <a href=\"https:\/\/buy.garmin.com\/shop\/shop.do?pID=349\">Forerunner 305<\/a> or the <a href=\"https:\/\/buy.garmin.com\/shop\/shop.do?cID=142&#038;pID=11039\">Forerunner 405<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The 405 is the newer, smaller model, just released this summer, and which is getting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/reviews\/product\/garmin_forerunner_405\">all the hype<\/a>. I read lots of reviews that compared the two and ultimately decided to go for the 305 for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Money: <\/strong>I saved about $150 (I bought my 305 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Garmin-Forerunner-Wrist-Mounted-Fitness-Computer\/dp\/B000CSWCQA\">on Amazon<\/a> for about $210 vs. the $350 it would&#8217;ve been for the 405 with heartrate monitor).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Display: <\/strong>The 305 has a bigger display (I love data and the 305 can display 4 data fields at once).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Features: <\/strong>From everything I read, the 305 and 405 are virtually identical besides the design (405 is much smaller and sleeker, but I wouldn&#8217;t have worn it when I wasn&#8217;t running anyway) and the fact that the 405 has iPod-like &#8220;touch bezel.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve only run with my 305 a couple times this week so far, but already I&#8217;m loving it. There are so many features that I haven&#8217;t really leveraged anything but the basics yet. <\/p>\n<p><center><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/snag-1578.png' alt='snag-1578.png' \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Some features that are really cool about the watch:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>GPS tracking precision<\/li>\n<li>Accurate pace<\/li>\n<li>Heartrate monitoring<\/li>\n<li>Race against a virtual running partner<\/li>\n<li>Map courses &#038; compare past results with current<\/li>\n<li>Create quick, interval, or advanced workouts<\/li>\n<li>Download data<\/li>\n<li>Follow on map and graph what my current pace &#038; heartrate were at any point<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><center><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/snag-1579.png' alt='snag-1579.png' \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Some things I don&#8217;t like about the 305 so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Connecting to the satellites can take a while<\/li>\n<li>It is a bit on the big side (but doesn&#8217;t bother me too much)<\/li>\n<li>Every time I download my data &#038; close the Garmin Training Center, the data seems to go away (so I have to download again)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, it&#8217;s a great investment and I&#8217;m excited to leverage it to help me take my running to the next level.<\/p>\n<p><center><img src='http:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/snag-1580.png' alt='snag-1580.png' \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started running this year and bought an iPod with Nike+ early on to track my mileage. I had some initial frustration with it, subsequently learned how to hack it to recover my run data, but for the most part, really love it. Then I became a bit more serious about my running &#8212; I&#8217;ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabeanderson.com\/tech-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}