Watch Trev Run. Run Trev run.

trevor.george (67)in #life • 7 years ago (edited)

I have been building up to this for quite some time, and two days ago I finally did it – I bought a watch.

A Garmin 630 to be exact.

It’s a higher end running watch with loads of data collected and analysed, not just steps and speed and distance. It even tells me which foot I favour when I’m running.

I had a bit of fun setting it up though (and it’s still not all set up!). This is not a plug-and-play device. Garmin still have a long way to go in making this sort of thing easy to use. With the lower end watches, it may be easier, but this one have been a bit of a challenge to say the least to get it going.

To begin with the Bluetooth on the watch (or the phone app. I’m not quite sure) is crap. I had real problems trying to get it to connect, and it won’t stay connected for very long. It seems a little better today, but I don’t know why. Tomorrow it may be different.

The rest of it seems rock solid though. I went for my usual 10km run last night and then looked at the data it collected when I got back. It was pretty cool.

This watch doesn’t have a built in heart rate monitor, so you have to wear a chest strap. I’m ok with that. The strap is a bit uncomfortable when you put it on, but five minutes after you start off, you forget you’re wearing it.

I was able to check my heart rate, distance, pace etc on the go with just a glance at the watch, which was really useful.

One potentially large problem I have encountered is that a lot of the text is just too small for me to read, even with reading glasses on. So then I get cellphone notifications, I can see I have a notification, but it is always from the same person – my friend called Blurry.

Again this seems to be a bit better today. Maybe wiping my smudgy finger prints off the watch face has helped a bit.

I wore it to bed for the first night to track my sleep patterns. There was nothing recorded the next day. I was just about getting to the point where I was going to take it back to the shop and tell them what they could do with their overpriced piece of junk, when I noticed the date -4th November. The date was 4 February.

No wonder the data didn’t turn up.

So how do you set the date? I could set the time easily enough. There was nowhere for me to do it. No settings, no options, no instructions, nothing.

So back to the Garmin forums again.

I found a little snipped that saved the day, and my watch from the rubbish bin. The date and time is automatically picked up from satellites. All you need to do is go outside for a couple of minutes and the watch does it for you. So sitting in my bedroom was not helping.

I quickly ran outside, checked the GPS had kicked in, and then checked the date, and lo and behold – it was set!
This morning I did have data from my sleep last night. It looks like I thrash about a bit….

I still have lots of setting up and research to do on what the various bits of data it collects mean, but I think I’m liking it now.

Here are some of the stats it generates.

stats

The most interesting one for me was the maximum heart rate, because I’ll need to that to target my training. I would say 177 beats per minute is about right. I got up to 176 going up the last big hill just before the end, just before I pulled the pin and walked the rest of the way up the hill. You can see that at the right hand end of the red graph.

The blue graph is also interesting, as it shows the bits where I was stopped waiting to cross the road, or when I stopped to refill my water bottle.

graphs

I also did my fastest time for 10kms yet, so there is definite improvement.

My next planed run will be 15kms at a much slower pace and see how that goes.

So lots of interesting stuff to filled around with here and keep me interested in trying to better my performance. Next week I’ll also see how it goes in the gym for a strength training session and let you all know (because you find this stuff just fascinating, I know).

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