Garmin Forerunner 301

Last September I treated myself to a Garmin 301 GPS and heart rate unit, up until that point the only piece of digital running equipment that I owned was a dodgy old watch, with a basic stopwatch functions. Run lengths were guest-mated with the calculation that I normally run about 8.5 minute miles, so a 16 minute run was 2 miles etc.

When the Garmin came I had a wake up call! What I thought was about a 5 mile course was really 4.2 :-/ and to insult to injury it shows you exactly what your heart was up to and also how slow your pace really was.

Is it any good? No - its brilliant. I wear it every time I run now. Plugging it in to my Pc when I get back from a run to download my run information to the “training center” software that came with the unit. It shows you a map of your route, maps this with other info like heart rate, distance covered, calories spent and time. J Also when it is plugged in to the pc via the USB cable it charges the wrist unit (which lasts for around 13 hours at a go, but I'm not about to run for 13 hours to test this).

The only thing I would change is the time it takes to locate satellites, I’m often stood waving my arm around trying to find a signal, if this doesn’t look mad enough I also for some reason cant help looking up?

All in all its great, and I’m really glad that I brought one - trouble is the new models are out now and they look even better…