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"I called to order a heart rate monitor and had a better experience than if I had gone into a store in person!! Rusty took the time to help me choose a watch that would match my needs. We picked the Garmin Forerunner 210. Amazingly easy to use!!!!! Even when I accidentally shut it off and called Rusty for help.....was like calling my trainer!! I consider Rusty part of my training team now!! Definitely a Customer for life!! - Erin D., marathon runner

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Suunto Ambit 2
Suunto Ambit 2 (All Models)
Our Price: $400.00

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • More memory for lots of apps and firmware updates.

  • The 2S offers swim features like laps and strokes.

  • The 2S offers power output for cycling with ANT+ power meters.

  • The thinner profile for the 2S makes it the ideal triathlon watch.
Polar RC3
Polar RC3 (All Models)
Our Price: $229.95

Polar RC3

The Lightest Fully Integrated GPS watch on the market! Orange Model Not Available Until Late May 2013

The GPS watch is for runners, cyclists and outdoor athletes seeking to improve fitness and performance.

Garmin  fenix
Garmin fenix
Our Price: $399.99

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • First ABC watch offering GPS handheld maps this watch could save your life in bad weather, vertigo, or when you get "turned around" in the back country.

  • Rugged and built to endure rough conditions with a shock-resistant, steel-reinforced housing, scratch-resistant mineral crystal and tough wristband.

  • GPS lets you create routes, record up to 1,000 way points; TracBack function guides you back along a previously recorded track.

  • Barometric altimeter provides accurate elevation information to keep track of ascent, descent and weather.
Garmin Forerunner 610
Garmin Forerunner 610 (All Models)
Our Price: $349.99

FREE Foot Pod - While They Last!

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • The touch screen navigation is super fast and intuitive after a few sessions and beats button hands down.

  • The ability to totally customize all screens and switch quickly between sports were well liked.

  • The fact that it makes a great everyday watch and isn't so big like the triathlon watches.

  • Quick satellite acquisition, easy set-up and the new Training Benefit feature made this a tester favorite.
Garmin Forerunner 910XT GPS Watch
Garmin Forerunner 910XT (All Models)
Our Price: $299.99

SAVE $100 ON SALE NOW - Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • Improve Swim efficiency - computes your swim efficiency (SWOLF) score, which is determined by adding the number of strokes taken per lap to the time.

  • GPS accurate speed, distance, pace and time for running, biking and all outdoor sports.

  • New barometric altimeter receives accurate on board altitude for running, cycling, as well as feet climbed and descended.

  • Training Effect tracks the intensity and helps you adjust future workouts based upon previous training history.
Garmin Forerunner 210
Garmin Forerunner 210 (All Models)
Our Price: $199.99

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • Both Real-time pacing for intervals and average pace.

  • The soft chest strap (optional) is nicer than the Garmin 110 strap - more comfortable and lighter.

  • The laps feature records each mile time and creates great maps of your runs with comparable time segments.

  • Ryan Hall used this watch when he ran a 2:04 marathon at Boston - need we say more?.
garmin forerunner 10
Garmin Forerunner 10 (Not A Heart Rate Monitor)
Our Price: $129.99

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • Super easy to use and set up and it gets distance and pacing data in real-time.

  • The Virtual pacing feature really keeps you on task.

  • Super light weight and much thinner profile than most GPS watches.

  • Styles, fun colors and sheer simplicity along with calorie data.
Polar RCX3 GPS Men
Polar RCX3 Men All Models
Our Price: $169.98

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • Polar RCX3 offers a quick change interface for moving from sport to sport.

  • 5 custom heart rate zones for each sport.

  • WIND technology avoids magnetic interference.

  • RCX3 works with G5 GPS sensor, S3+ foot pod and Polar CS WIND speed and cadence sensors.
Magellan Switch Up
Magellan Switch Up (All Models)
Our Price: $249.99

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • The way the watch body pops right off the band and right into a bike mount.

  • The overall durability of the unit construction is superior and it gets satelittes super fast.

  • The 16 hour spare battery that can be user installed quickly.

  • The fact that full navigation and exercise features are built in, plus a barometric altimeter.
magellan switch
Magellan Switch (All Models)
Our Price: $189.99

Our Favorite 4 Features From Testing

  • The way the watch body pops right off the band and right into a bike mount.

  • The overall durability of the unit construction is superior and it gets satellites super fast.

  • The 16 hour spare battery that can be user installed quickly.

  • The fact that full navigation and exercise features are built in.
   
 

GPS Watch Devices Revolutionize Fitness For Endurance Athletes

A GPS Watch Can Take Your Fitness and Fun Factor To The Next Level

GPS watch devices have been at the forefront of a fitness watch revolution over the past few years and, for good reason, as they generate a great amount of data to assess performance with.

A story appeared in the New York Times last year questioning the accuracy of GPS watches as opposed to foot pods but we found quite the opposite depending upon terrain type. For very hilly or mountainous terrain we found GPS watches to be far more accurate. In fact tester John Yarrington found a foot pod to be off by 1 mile in a 17 mile run.

All this is easily explained by the fact that foot pods work off of average stride length so any time you get into a situation where your stride length might change, like run/walk alternation, then you will always find a foot pod to be less accurate. The same thing is true if the steepness of the terrain causes you to greatly adapt your stride length. John Yarrington wrote a lengthy blog post about this topic and all the findings he came up with as he tested foot pods and GPS units side by side.

HOW GPS WORKS

GPS watch devices will Geo-cache locational data simultaneously with biometric data, meaning that location, heart rate, distance, speed and other numbers are recorded. These recordings are generally done on 1, 3, 5 or 10 second intervals but some watches, like the Suunto Ambit allow you to set recording intervals as long as one minute.

garmin 210
Ryan Hall with his Garmin 210 in Boston

While these longer recording intervals may work well for hiking or mountaineering they do not work as well for sports done at speed like running or cycling. For running or cycling you should set your recording intervals at one second. The reason is that in one minute you could go around two switchbacks in a trail or a road and the watch only records the distance as the shortest point between the two points. One second recording intervals entirely eliminates this issue.

DIFFERENT WATCHES FOR DIFFERENT SPORTS SPECIFIC DATA

The type of GPS watch unit you will need will depend entirely on the type of sport, or sports, that you are participating in. Long course triathletes might need a watch like the Garmin Forerunner 910XT or the Polar RCX5 G5, whereas a runner might get by with something simple like the Timex Run Trainer or Garmin Forerunner 210. A cyclist will need a watch that displays speed in miles or kilometers per hour as and can do pedal cadence like the Garmin 610, Garmin 410 or Polar RCX5 Bike.

Triathlon competitors that want power data for cycling will need to consider the Garmin Forerunner 910XT or the Garmin 310XT as those are the only two watches that gather this type of data.

Mountaineers, hikers and ultra-marathon runners may want to consider a watch like the Suunto Ambit or Polar RCX5 G5 because of their longer battery life.

Thus, as you can see, there is no one ideal, one-size-fits-all solution for every situation which is why it pays to talk to an expert.

WHAT TO EXPECT WITH A GPS WATCH

GPS units use lithium-ion rechargeable batteries because GPS takes a lot of power. If these watches used coin cell lithium batteries it could burn up dozens of them per month. This means that you have to recharge the watch every 7 to 17 hours of use depending upon the watch type.

Nearly all GPS training computers record heart rate, speed, distance, and location data via a bread crumb trail that can be used for later mapping. They also use some GPS based altitude but this often needs to be corrected as it is not as accurate as a barometric altimeter. Fortunately Garmin has an elevation correction feature using US Geological Survey data so you can screw the accuracy down to within a couple feet.

For really accurate on board altitude you need to consider the Garmin 910XT or Suunto Ambit as both contain barometric altimeters.

Some of these devices allow for customized screen data and others do not. Generally the lower end running GPS units have fixed data points.

WARNING: THE DATA OUTPUT AND MAPS GET ADDICTING

GPS is highly addictive because you can store rides, share them with friends and with some features, like the Player function on Garmin Connect software, you can even drag and drop an icon to a specific point on your course, like the top of a hill, and see precisely what your heart rate, speed, distance, cadence and more were for that one particular instant.

Warning, you may start acting like a child and bring your GPS with you everywhere. One day we tried to see if we could scribble in the whole ski area at Grand Targhee in one day because that is the masochistic type of stuff we enjoy. I did this with the late Doug Coombs and Rick Hunt and we had a blast doing it, but boy were we tired for the 3 hour ride back to Bozeman.

You might even just use it to check your car's speedometer, just stay within the speed limit. It is also easy to ant to see how fast you can go down a steep hill on a bike but just be careful and look at the speed later, not during - we don't want anymore road kill we've got enough gophers out here in Montana :).

SPEAK WITH A REAL EXPERT TO GET THE SAME THING AS GOLDILOCKS "JUST RIGHT"

We highly recommend talking with one of our highly qualified experts and it is super easy. Simply dial 866-586-7129 toll-free from anywhere in North America and see why the Heart Rate Watch Company is second to none when it comes to quality advise.

copyright 2012, Rusty Squire, author, support@heartratewatchcompany.com







Heart Rate Watch Company
1087 Stoneridge Dr., Suite 2A
Bozeman, MT 59718
866-586-7129