I’ve worked my way through a number of fancy running watches over the years but my latest, the Forerunner 405 (reviewed May 2008) was just not designed to be a gym bunny buddy. Fortunately the Garmin Forerunner FR60 was released earlier in the year and appeared to be just what I required.

In summary, it’s a footpod/HR monitor which is ANT enabled meaning you can wirelessly upload data and connect to other ANT enabled equipment such as gym machines and the fancy new BC1000 Tanita weighing scales.
Unlike most of the others in the forerunner series, this watch does not have GPS, it is waterproof though.

I’ve had a few footpod watches before, including the Nike+, Polar 725 and Polar RS200SD and I’ve been impressed with all of them. In most cases they have proved to be accurate out of the box without the need for calibration and are ready for action from the moment you put the watch into training mode so there is no need to hang around stretching out your hamstrings while you wait for a the GPS unit to lock onto a satellite signal.

The footpod speed and distance monitors also have a huge advantage over GPS when it comes to monitoring pace. Pace readings on GPS units have a tendency to fluctuate all over the place while the footpod units prove to be more stable and therefore more reliable in any given instance.

What the footpods lack when compared to their bigger GPS brothers, is the ability to create lovely map trails of where you’ve been. GPS makes you feel like an adventurer, an explorer of uncharted tracks, but let’s face it, GPS isn’t for everyone.

If you run the same few routes over and over again the joy of the GPS map soon begins to wane and if like me, you spend a good proportion of your time on the treadmill, the GPS output would result in a terribly unsatisfying mess centred above your gym coordinates.

Garmin Forerunner FR60 in Action – Screenshots

Here’s a few shots of the Garmin FR60 as I move through the history screens for one workout. The final image shows the virtual partner screen which is one of the view options while training.

Garmin FR60 Compared to Nike+ and Polar

Nike+

The Nike+ wrist unit offers an accurate footpod with a minimal design. It’s ideal for social networking as it makes it so easy to upload stats via twitter, facebook and assorted other widgets. It’s the cheapest option as well but I can’t help finding it a bit disappointing, I just can’t stand the cartoon style display of the stats.

Polar

I really loved the RS200SD, the display was brilliant and the history data lent itself perfectly for being transferred to a training log. It has now been superseded by the Polar RS300X and I was momentarily tempted by it until I started pricing up the extras. The really annoying feature of Polar is that they require you to by all the necessary attachements separately. The ridiculous “flowlink” is required for uploading data to the web but costs £49.99 whereas Garmin include their usb ANT connectivity stick in the box along with the watch.

Garmin

Garmin has the edge over the competition, everything is supplied in the box and the connection is relatively straightforward.
Having uploaded the data it is easy to import the data files into sporttracks or other training logs.

Sunday was a hot day and the combined sweat of 2402 lady swimmers had condensed on the marquee roof and was starting to drip onto the dressers below. Other peoples sweat, wet skin and rubber only combine to create more stress and more sweat. I successfully directed my right foot into the wetsuit but then started hopping around and cursing my full English breakfast as I tried to squeeze my left leg through my left arm hole.

There was no time for this sort of faffing, we were late and were already supposed to be sitting in the lake “warming” up. Despite expecting the seams to burst at any moment leaving me pink and vulnerable like a lizard shedding its skin, I did actually manage to yank up the zipper. After patching all my grasping finger nail holes with a puncture repair kit I waddled out in full glory looking like a fat, black, naked lady with a severe nicotine withdrawal problem.

Not exactly my best look but here we go – that’s me next to the tall skinny guy, who I will not be swimming with next year. I’m going to find myself some fat friends.

As per last year I secreted myself towards the back of the pack in a vain attempt to avoid mid-lake battles. This year though I wasn’t swimming in the last wave and had to cope with the chasing hoards of sub 30 minute swimmers.

I had a few new strategies for this year’s attempt at the Great North Swim. Firstly I was going to remember my nose clip and then stick my head in the water, I wasn’t going to bother much with my legs as they’d proved useless in unscientific pool timing tests, I was going to wear shoes (?) and finally I wasn’t going to get asthma.

The nose clip really helped as you’d expect and I’m still sure that legs are overrated in swimming; I tried to observe every swimmer that passed me and a good deal of the sub 30 minute swimmers did not appear to be kicking with their legs. Of course they may have been kicking like crazy up til that point but its good enough evidence for me.

Probably the most significant decision in my overall performance was to give the asthma a wide berth. No idea how I did that, I took on heavy quantities of caffeine in the run up to the event, stuck my head in cold water a few times but there also seemed to be less motor fuel hanging around on the surface of lake this year and that may have had something to do with it.

So all in all, I had another pootle round a stunning lake, positively enjoyed myself for a few hundred metres and came home with a new pb, knocking 10 minutes off last years time and dragging myself out of the bottom 1% and well into the top 96% of all competitors. Result!
The only disappointment was that I managed to look decidedly camp in my sprint finish photo, not that I need to share that with anybody.

Actual stats:

Time – 1:01:57
Overall – 4392/4579
Age/gender – 366/385

As Dan can’t be arsed to keep a record of his times, I will jot them down here for prosperity:

Time – 0:44:14
Overall – 3148/4579

Oh and I got a new t-shirt.

<

Sainsburys and The Mirror have teamed up to offer a 26 day alphabetic giveaway.
Tomorrow (Thursday 10th Sept) is day I, as in I for iPod, and they are giving away the ideal runner’s gadget, an 8GB silver Apple iPod Nano.

The competition is free to enter and requires you to answer an apparently simple question. Check it out here: mirrorcashback.co.uk/sainsburys

I’ll be holding back for day 26, I think I have the idle spot for a jazzy zebra rug.

I pulled the wetsuit out of the cupboard last month, dusted out the moth balls and then attempted the big squeeze……
Not good.
I forced the zip up but couldn’t straighten my arms and panic ensued within 30 secs. With no body glide I was falling all over the bedroom trying to trap the rubber under something solid so I could fight my way free.

I immediately pulled out my spreadsheet and started the calorie controlled route to a not so snug wetsuit but four weeks later I’m scouring the spreadsheet for dodgy formulas. Something must have gone wrong somewhere because I’m only about 2 ounces down.

I’m running almost daily and have now stepped into the serious measures zone. Stella has been eradicated (apart from Blog writing evenings) but if the scales don’t start playing fair I’ll have to join the bald penguin preservation society.

If I slice off both arms (rubber ones obviously), I’ll be able to move my shoulders and I’ll provide a new skin for at least two bald penguins, maybe even four, if they’re short.

As that seems an increasingly likely option at this late stage I thought I better get used to some cold weather swimming. So today I finally managed a trip to Tooting Bec Lido.

At 93 metres a length its practically open water swimming and the temperature was shocking enough to remind me that freezing mountain lakes will be unbearable without full body rubber protection.

I better make sure I don’t write too many blogs between now and September 13th.

I took receipt of the latest wii fit incarnation, EA Sports Active, during the last heat wave in June. It was 33′ out and I decided to embark on a 40 minute challenging work out in the front room.

The kids were suitably intrigued by the contents of the box – a rubber strap with DIY handles and a special thigh mounted holster for the nunchuk.

I looked a right bobby dazzler, sweating with the excessive humidity and struggling to pull the strap tight enough around my thigh for it to stay closed.

It amused the children though, Ruby settled back into the settee to witness the spectacle and enjoy her packet of salt and vinegar snackojacks – all 127 calories of them.

I was a bit disappointed by the character choice on the new game. It may have been insulting but I have nonetheless become rather enamoured of my little wii fit avatar – short, fat and challenged in the t-shirt department which is just too short to pull over my bulging umbilicus. The choices are far more limited in EA Sports Active, you are just a delicately modified version of their average joe (or joleen), try as you might, you cannot create a tubby lard arse. Some may consider this a tick in plus box but personally I prefer a bit of a weeble-like character to remind me why I’m running on the spot in the middle of the living room.

Realism is the key to this game. The characters are real and the exercises seem real too. I started having to walk round a 400m track kicking my legs up behind me to kick my buttocks, then followed this with the knee raises. All very proper stuff but BORING! No slalom skiing on this game or balancing on a wobble board to flip the fish into the mouth of a penguin. This of course will be seen as a big plus for many people, proper, serious, sporty folk perhaps.

I moved on to squats and the machine was insistent that I wasn’t trying hard enough. My knee collapses as it approaches 90 degrees and the only way I could get the machine to accept my exercise was to plonk myself onto the sofa, wait 2 seconds, clamber up and repeat.

More running and stretching exercises followed before we seemed to loop around and start again. Doh! Not more track exercises. It kept moaning at me for being too slow in the buttock kicking exercises. I was all hot and bothered and moany, so Ruby who by now had finished the snackojacks, pushed me out of the way and offered to help me burn enough calories for my own pack.

With a seating change, I lounged back and watched the calorie counter tick towards my treat allowance. Ruby was going great guns so I encouraged her to keep going til we’d burnt enough for a packet of Doritos. A perfectly ideal way to lose weight I think.

There are a few other exercises thrown into the box. There’s your standard boxing routine which never fails to get you going and a rather intense speedline skating routine which has you squatting for speed and then leaping over numerous obstacles. I really enjoyed that one and it didn’t half make the thighs burn.

The kids haven’t touched the game since its first outing, it’s not as fun as the wii fit (not that they’ve touched that for months either) but then I don’t think EA Games are really touting this as a game. It’s a personal fitness trainer and if you are serious about committing to a program and don’t mind exercising in front of the telly and the children you probably would see some benefits from taking the 30-day challenge.

Good intentions were fine back in March, but its July now so I suppose I couldn’t have taken a lighter approach to training if I’d actually tried.

I have now swum though, so it’s all back on track.

Public swimming is a funny old do. Can’t say I actually like it that much. I like the swimming bit but other wet people can be so annoying.
It’s an absolute war of wills. Two swimmers fighting over a single strip of pool, locked on a course for a head on collision, determined not to give an inch til one smacks the other in the chin. A slow motion, watery, game of chicken.

Why do they always insist on swimming in my lane? I make a careful assessment when I get into the pool to determine a clear line that I might be able to squeeze up and down in but when I look up after 3 laps all the newcomers seem to have chosen my lane to try and muscle in on.

I’ve also added the speed splits from Sporttracks just to illustrate how painfully slow the process was. I’ve currently got my log set up to show running and jogging paces but its quite interesting to see that I was walking for at least 7 miles of the ride and barely jogging for another 4 miles.

Go early is my recommendation!

And here’s the GPS elevation, its bound to be slightly inaccurate but it gives you a feel for the route.
You can click on both images to enlarge.

Experienced L2B’ers had warned me to start the event early but I’m too lazy to get up for a 6am start. I may have had a leisurely 8:30am kick off but I very quickly regretted it. We just never seemed to get going. We crawled through Tooting and Mitcham and out towards the M25 and 3 hours and 20 mins later the garmin beeped to tell me we had just about escaped London.

3 hours and 20 minutes with a bike and we’d only travelled 19 miles and what’s more we were walking already.

The very first sign of an incline and the whole pedal pumping mass ground to a complete standstill. There was no room to weave in and out so everyone one from lycra clad mountain goats to mums on old shoppers had to dismount and walk.

Given the rather lame nature of the incline it was disheartening to say the least. I’m the worlds slowest runner but yesterday I barely managed to cycle above my half marathon pace.

I think there were something like 4 or 5 hillocks marked on the route map and all were fairly inconsequential except for the final horror – Ditchling Beacon.

The crowds must have thinned at some point because I did manage to get back on the bike and for a few brief miles I actually felt the wind in my face and enjoyed the freedom of a crazy hell for leather descent.

The route, which I’ll illustrate when I’ve got it uploaded, had the potential to be a really enjoyable jaunt into Brighton. Apart from the few little bumps that I’ve already belittled it felt like a 54 mile descent to the sea. There was a heck of a lot of high speed freewheeling to be done but I suppose sharing country lanes with 27,000 other cyclists was never going to feel much better than getting stuck behind a convoy of caravans on a bank holiday exodus from Bridlington.

Ditcling Beacon arrived eventually and the one time I hoped for a blockade of walkers, so I could just excuse myself from the trouble of attempting the ascent, they all appeared to have adopted the “walkers to the left” etiquette. There was a clearish path up and I had to attempt it. I didn’t get too far up though before I lost my rhythm bobbing in and out of bailing bikers and I joined them. It was a tough long walk up so I can only imagine it was a challenging ride.

From this vantage point I could see the sea and Dave said he could smell the pier. I thought he said, “Can you smell the beer?” and I actually thought I could. It gave me a little burst of joy and I blasted my way down onto the slip road into the town and didn’t rest until I found myself with beer and chips in hand.

Damn fine chips they were too.

The t-shirt can be viewed on the events page.

]]>

I haven’t been very successful with my running recently so I was grateful that we were in the flatlands of Lincolnshire and that it was a delightfully drizzly day. Here’s my 10k out and back route along the canal:

I was sent the latest Sony Walkman W Series to test out the other day.

It came bundled with a playlist designed to either inspire or drive me nuts, with the challenge laid down for me to create my own inspirational running ensemble.

The new Walkman is an interesting looking gadget, minimal and stylish in a Dr Spock kind of fashion. It clips apart neatly to sit around your neck with no extraneous wires to get tangled up in your arms or t-shirt.

I’ve been through a fair few headphones and mp3 systems in my time. It started with the iPod nano with assorted headphones – the best being the ubiquitous lime green Sennheiser PMX80 running headphones and then moved on to the chunky, yet delightful, iPhone. The iPhone coincided with loads of tube commuting time so I shifted to the excellent Sennheiser CX500’s, great for private listening on crowded trains but outrageously irritating now I’ve gone back to the running commute – I have to stop every couple of steps to disentangle the cables.

So, now I’ve got my hands on the Sony W Series mp3 Walkman, all my separate headphones are defunct. I have to admit to not having much of a musical ear but to my mind this unit has the best sound quality yet. The integral headphones seem to sit quite deeply into your ear and the sound is excellent. Mind you the playlist had a few dodgy tracks, rather heavy reliance on the synthesiser and some sounded like they were recorded from the bowels of a coke can but I’m sure that was how they were meant to sound. It’s quite fun running to someone elses playlist but I’m looking forward to getting some “quality” music on board to really test them out.

I found them very comfortable, although I did feel like a prize tool running along in them – you can get them in bright pink if you want to look extra special.

I did a randomish fit test around the house this morning and it seems I was the only one who found them comfortable. Admittedly two of my subjects were of the small child variety and the other grown up obviously has a particularly small head with odd ear canals, but it might be worth testing them out before buying if you’ve had problems with ear related stuff before.

They are apparently a doddle to update by simply dragging the songs across to the external drive (USB cable supplied), I’ll try this out next week with my new and hopefully improved playlist.

Here’s my trial list:

1. Simian Mobile Disco – Sleep Deprivation
2. LCD Soundsystem – Get Innocuous
3. Hot Chip – Ready for the Floor
4. Weezer – Buddy Holly
5. TV on the Radio – Golden Age
6. Mylo – Drop the Pressure
7. Prodigy – Out of Space
8. Michael Jackson – Beat It
9. Don’t Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
10. Gu’s and Roses – Paradise City