Game Changer?

Saw a press release a while back about the new Suunto Ambit watch. 
At that point I tried not to get too excited about it.

I have previously written a bit about GPS watches, mainly looking at Suunto and Garmin, and how if I want to get all the information on a run that I want to record, I have to take 2 watches, which is a bit silly really.  However, I have faithfully stuck with my Garmin 305 for a number of years, and although it's been repaired or replaced twice, I am rather fond of the old battler.
To be honest though, it wasn't long ago that I was bemoaning the fact to a number of acquaintances, (well, ok, it was Lynne) that there was no decent device which recorded Heart Rate, Height gain/loss in m/per min and GPS data. -Oh, and incidentally had a battery life of greater than 12 hours while it was doing those things, and, and the same time, could provide a barometric graph of the previous 24 hours. A combination of my Garmin 305 and Suunto Core, if you will.

If someone could come up with a device that could do all that, and if possible, make it small enough to attach to your wrist. Well. That manufacturer would have a game changing device on their hands.

Garmin appear to have gone very much towards the Triathalon market with the new 910XT with swimming stroke counts and all kinds of wonderful things to help calculate training advantages. They also claim battery life of "up to 20 hours".
This is not helpful.
Do they mean with GPS on or off? Ok, so triathalons don't tend to go on for 20 hours, but some races do. Is the watch going to run out of charge with an hour still to go? Garmin, give us ACTUAL numbers please. This one costs on the sharp end of £400. £390, actually.

And Suunto came along and flashed about something called the Ambit.
Oh Lordy.
Heart rate monitoring, GPS tracker (and navigation- though thats by the by), barometric altitude, compass, 15hours on training mode (short GPS tracking) and 50 hours on mountain mode (long GPS tracking), and 30 days battery life on normal watch mode, and it looks to be about the size of a normal watch, not some grotesquely large GPS reciever that Garmins seem to be. Its a watch that performs as a functional instrument, rather than a GPS masquerading as a watch. It isn't going to be released until April, and when it does, again, the guide price appears to say from £350. Which probably means that in reality, if you want one with a HR belt, again, it'll be the thick end of £400.

Bar the teeth grinding price (though I understand that this is a very special bit of kit), that is a pretty damn good list for a watch, and it seems almost perfect.
Almost.
The one function that I absolutely love on my Core is the 24hour barometric history graph. The watch has a barometer. It also has enough pixels to show a graph- you can see that from the publicity shots where it shows altitude gain/loss. From the bumpf, it seems to say that it has a trend graph, so thats pointing in the right direction. I really really hope that it does. It would make it, at least for me, a complete and perfect instrument for training and running in the hills and mountains.

Game changer? I think so. 
Now all I need to do is save up for it to see if it actually does what it promises.

Garmin customer service

Well, I'm relatively impressed. A few years ago when I had issues with my Garmin Forerunner 305 I tried calling up the (somewhat expensive) call line, was kept waiting for ages, and then got through to a tech who had no idea what she was on about, took a while to get things sorted ... you get the idea. Eventually the issue was sorted, but the word to be used was "Eventually".

As you may have read in another post- my Forerunner had developed a fault, and I was dreading calling Garmin to get it sorted out.
However, I finally bit the bullet and did so about a week ago, and to my surprise and pleasure, its a normal phone number, not one of these 0845 jobbies. Bonus- something has changed.
Got through to a recorded voice menu... oh no.
Pressed the right button (only one needing to be pushed) and hey presto, I got through to a human being! Not only that, but someone who knew what they were talking about. I explained the problem and he admitted that he had never heard of the issue before- to be fair- it is a totally random one, so if he did say he knew what it was I would have been a bit skepical unless he explained it to in technicolour detail.

Admittidly the unit is a bit old- I've certainly had it for 3 years or so, so it is slightly out of warranty. It was agreed that I would send it back for it to be assessed, fixed if possible, or if it couldn't be fixed, another one would be sent in replacement. If it was to be replaced, I would be charged about £50, and it would be couriered straight back to me.
So if its crocked, I get a new unit, for £50. ok.
I handed over a credit card number (never use debit over the phone- if you get defrauded on a credit card its not actually YOUR money you are missing, with a debit card, it IS your money that is missing... but thats another story), and sent my Garmin off in a jiffy bag.

That was on Friday. Its now Tuesday the week after and I recieved a new (well, refurbished) Forerunner 305, delivered by UPS. Thats pretty much one working day turnaround.

I am impressed.
Thanks Garmin.

If you have had issues with Garmins Customer service before, especially in the UK, it seems that they have take the criticism to heart, and there is a new order in there. I would now be happy to recommend them to anyone.

(As an end note, it should be said that Garmin didn't say what the issue was- I suspect they still don't know.. would be nice to find out their findings though...)

Garmin 305 issues

Now this is an interesting one. I wrote a while ago that I was having a couple of issues with my trusty Garmin 305 Forerunner. It appeared to be switching off on me during runs and races.
I narrowed this down to the fact it was switching off when I jumped over a stile or a wall or something, figuring that I was knocking a button or something like that.

I realised that this wasn't actually the case, as it kept turning off recently when I just pressed the mode button.
Odd.
So I uploaded all the run files and information on to the computer and did a soft reset, went for a run- it did the same thing.
Ok.
Hard reset, try again.
It worked ok for 2 runs, and then switched off on me seemingly at random.

I've now looked at what is happening and can't work out for the life of me WHY it is happening- let me explain.
Watch on left wrist. Happily ticking away.
I can wave it around, I can run normally with it, and can do all kinds of things, but I cannot bend my wrist without it switching off.
Once I have the watch on my wrist and I extend it backward, as if I am putting my hand down to hold onto something- like a stile, it switches off, immediately and without ceremony, without beeping, nothing, it just switches off.
I can't replicate it when the watch is off my wrist, but can when it is on.

Hopefully the video I've embedded will show that- none of the buttons are pressed, nothing really happens except that the unit switches off.
Anyone got any thoughts? Its served me well for a while, and this really does seem like a technical fault.
Garmin? Got anything to add?

Garmin forerunner 305

Grrr.
So I've run 3 races in the past 3 weeks, and each and every time, my Garmin Forerunner 305 has turned off in the middle of them. One of them may have happened when I went over a stile, the resulting backward bending of my hand may have bumped the button and switched it off. But the other 2 times, and in the run with Matt and Rob, it seems to have switched off spontaneously.

Now, I'm not so much of a stat freak that I'm in a raging anger about not having my HR and pace stats to geek over at the end of the race, however, it is a bit annoying. Especially when it hasn't happened at all, ever, and then all of a sudden, in 3 races, at the end of the summer season, each and every time I've come in to the end, looked to switch off the watch, and, lo and behold, a blank screen.

Each time I have switched it back on, and looked where it turned off. Today, it was having none of it.
I've already deleted most of the records off the device, thinking that maybe it was excessive amounts of data that was making it crash. After today, it would seem that I was wrong.
Hmmm.

So the next thing to do is hard reset, which is quite easy to do, but completely wipes the unit back to factory settings. Holding the mode and enter buttons and then switching it on.
Boom. Hard reset done.

So now I've done that, I'll have to get out and run with it, see if it works.
If it doesn't, next step, shouting at Garmin.
Fun fun fun.

slightly overdoing it

IOW, set out at 9am(ish) after inputting a load of Geocaches into a GPS- (my forerunner is down, having to be shipped back- again, and the one I borrowed, I neglected to charge up- doh).

Ran over to Beaper Shute, then to Knighton, all in good time, though the caches were a little hard to find.

From Knighton I went out along the dismantled railway, then south to Godshill, south again over the downs and then to Wroxall.
By this time I had covered over 20km and was beginning to feel it.
Started on my way back, instead of going up Shanklin down- that would have been a killer, and went back via America wood, apse heath and borth wood (where my water ran out), up into alverstone, (where a blister on my little toe popped), up over brading down, into brading, and back home.
38km ish. in 6 hours.
damn.
certainly took quite a bit longer than I thought it would, and was more tired than I imagined.
Mind you, I wasnt wearing compression shorts, and was drinking water rather than 4:1, and I would have been much faster had I not had to keep stopping for caches, and not had horrendous hills to keep going up.

was fairly tired at the end of the day, but at least I know I still have the mental fortitude to pretty much cane out a marathon.

Return of the Garmin

Exactly what it says on the tin. 

I am now the owner of a new Garmin- with the new ware on it as well, which is nice. 

Happy days, and out for a longer tarmac run tomorrow. Joy.