HiTec Running
I go nuts about data. I admit it. I can’t leave the house without my heart rate monitor not even for once and when i think back to the days when i had a Timex on my left wrist and a simple Polar on my right just showing the heart rate i wonder how i made it back then.
I thought my running life was perfect when i finally got a Polar that could transfer the training data via sound to the computer. I had kept a training log before filling out pages and pages by hand about everything i did (just the thought of it!) and getting that sonic thingy was just a revolution. But of course technology never stops moving forward, so the next step was just a question of time.
When i got my Polar S710 with infrared data transfer i guess i trained more just to have something to transfer and the Precision Performance software has been working for me greatly for nearly a decade. The one thing that was kind of a drag was that i was restricted to run where i had biked before. On the bike of course the S710 would record the distance, but on foot i had to stick to some loops i knew the distance of or go scouting out new courses every now and then.
Cue GPS. That’s the final word on training. At least for me. I got a Garmin Forerunner 305 and it feels so different to run with it. I go out and run with it wherever i feel like running. Where i live it’s easy to get out of town and once you hit the fields outside the city there’s no limit. The good thing (and that goes for biking as well of course) is that in case i should get lost, the thing can take me home. I first saw a Forerunner running in Spain about a year ago and i thought it was just too much. But now i guess i understand and i wouldn’t wanna miss it anymore.
The 305 is very affordable, i can totally live with the size and weight and in case you don’t like the software Garmin provides (Training Center), here is an Open Source alternative that’s gonna give you so many possibilities to play with it’s not even funny anymore. Talking about information overload …
