Right, this is where I’m at something of an advantage over the other chaps in this diary, simply because I’ve already been using the Garmin Forerunner 935 for marathon training for a while – the sheer amount of things you can do with this watch is the reason I selected it for this test.
As TechRadar’s Running Man of Tech I’ve been running six or seven days a week for the last four years – along with failing at a couple of triathlons – so popping on a pair of trainers and heading out into whatever weather is second nature for me now – and I’ve long enjoyed using Garmin options on my wrist as a run-and-fitness tracker.
Garmin’s watches are performance-based, rather than relying on flashy screens and pointless features. It monitors my heart rate all day and night, provides info on my sleep, tracks my steps, assesses how hard I’m running each day and even spits notifications from my connected phone to my wrist.
All this on a seven day battery life, off six to seven hours a week run tracking too – that’s the best we’ve seen from any watch.
And the great thing is once you’ve downloaded the Garmin Connect app, you’re all set up once it’s paired to your phone for any activity you can throw it into.
What I also like about Garmin watches is the sheer amount of things I can monitor when running. The E-Ink display is so legible in all lights, and if I want to track anything from my average lap pace to my heart rate to the time the sun is going to set, it’s all available here and incredibly customisable.
Day 1) Running
It’s time for the hard work to begin, and I’m going to start with my homeland: running. Again, this feels like a bit of a cheat as I’ve been using the Forerunner 935 as my running companion for a while now, and I really like the variety of things it can do.
The main thing is just the reliability though – I’ll head out with my running chums most days, and they’re all also sporting a Garmin model of some sort.
That means when we cross the mile marker it can be a chorus of bleeps as the the GPS stays in line.
But today, it ’s time to hit Hyde Park solo and get running laps around the lake. My session is going to be a six mile progression, where each mile needs to be faster than the last, with the final set all-out speedwork (along with a half mile warm up and cool down).
Usually, I’ll just get out and run with this workout – I only need to remember how fast I’ve done each set (alerts blink up every mile) and make sure I go faster.
But for the purposes of this diary, I’ve set up the run ahead of time on the Garmin Connect app. It’s a little time-consuming and certainly not something you can do in the two minutes before you run, but offers useful prompts, especially for more technical sessions.
So today, that’s done and I’m ready to run. The GPS lock is a little slower on the Forerunner 935 than on other running watches I’ve used (including other models in the Garmin range, weirdly) but it bleeps within 30 seconds today and I’m off running.
I’ve eschewed the chest strap, as I’ve found it to be a little inaccurate, preferring the heart rate monitor scanning my pulse from my wrist. This is important, as I want to be able to see the difference in effort, not just pace, after my run to check I’ve not been helped by the wind behind me or a downward gradient.
Any workout with varying speeds is always more fun to do than a standard jog – and for that to work, I really need this technology strapped to my wrist. I could go online earlier and identify mile markers to spot en route, but with the Forerunner 935 I can drift off and just wait for the bleeps telling me what to do.
In terms of today’s workout – well, it’s hard to say anything about it really, as it worked out precisely as I set it up. Every mile I had my pace already set to meet (apart from the last mile, where it was all-out effort) and I kept within the parameters set to make sure I went faster each time.
The bleeping telling me to speed up and slow down was relatively minimal, but it’s always good to have that there keeping you in check – it really is like a coach alongside with a stopwatch just telling you what to do.
That doesn’t mean I wasn’t wanting to die by the end of it – the final section was into the wind and incredibly hard – but having the watch tell me what speed to go meant I largely kept right on pace.
Another feature of the Garmin system I really like is that it instantly uploads to Strava, the fitness social networking platform, as soon as the run is over so I can interrogate my workout straight away.
It turns out that for half the time I was running with the wind, and half the time against it, so the mile reps were right in terms of time, but not in effort.
Perhaps next time I’ll do this based on heart rate to get a more accurate training reflection – but there’s something so satisfying about running faster and faster that I’ll doubt I’ll ever switch to that mode.
One of the key things about this diary is working out whether I’ll keep doing the activity I’m testing, and yes – based on this, I think I’ll keep running.
Source: techradar.com