A personal trainer watch that encourages friendly rivalry and pace-setting, the Garmin Forerunner 610 is ideal for pavement-pounders that want to laud their running times.
By Leo Stiles
Thanks in part to their incredibly annoying Christmas ads,when you think Garmin, you think satellite navigation but the company has been branching into all sorts of areas of late, including a series of sadly unsuccessful smartphones and their latest gadgets – personal training watches.
Called the Forerunner Watch, the first of these gadgets were little more than glorified pedometers but the Swiss/American company quickly leveraged its experience in navigation technology to evolve the watches into something much more significant.
The latest Forerunner watch, the 610, bears almost no relation to the first one which debuted in 2003. For starters it actually looks like a watch and secondly, it has enough technology inside it to make even some of the best smartphones blush.
Obviously, its central feature is the GPS chip that makes the whole thing run and rather than tell you to take the third exit on a roundabout, the watch records your exact position and speed as you pound the pavement in search of your personal best. From this data, the watch links up with its own specialist software and your PC to map your route and record your pace, gradient, weather conditions and even your heart rate.
How has a spanner become the universal symbol tech options and settings?
This data can be used to build custom training routines and times which can then be loaded onto the watch. The next time you go out, the Forerunner will let you know when to pick things up and when to cool off and subtly push you towards your milestones.
All these routines can be edited on the go and new training plans and data can be accessed through the watch’s excellent touch screen interface. This touch screen is all business and while there are no points given here for flair, the screen itself is designed for all weather conditions. Water will not affect its performance and you can even operate the Forerunner if you are wearing gloves.
It’s not just your own training sessions that can be built either. The Forerunner website and a number of compatible third-party sites also have data for marathon routes and top running times that can be loaded onto the watch and used as a benchmark. This means if you fancy taking a crack at the Dublin Marathon course record, you can – it’s 2.09.07 if you were curious.
The software and watch will also allow you to foster some friendly rivalry with fellow runners through alerts and comparative stats. The watch also has a bike mode for the cycling enthusiast out there and functions pretty solidly as a conventional watch too, although it might be a tad bulky for some.
All said, the Forerunner 610 is an impressive uses of technologies that you might not have expected to be shoehorned into a watch but for anyone serious about running a marathon or designing their own training program, Gamin’s latest wristwear seems like just the ticket.
The Garmin Forerunner will launch in Ireland sometime in the next two months and will cost around €350.
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