GARMIN Forerunner 10

There are a lot of good entry-level GPS watches on the market. You can find them online. Craigslist is a good place to begin your search for GARMIN if you’re really budget conscious. Keep in mind you might not find exactly what you want.  Most of the sellers, I’ve noted, are trying to get full retail price for a used watch. I can’t say I blame them because the watches look good, are lightweight, have the features most people want for the outdoors and do retain their value.

Once in a while you strike gold but I think if you can’t find it discounted, go and buy it new. GARMIN is a good, reliable product and if you can spend the $129.00 I think you should get it over comparable brands, like Timex or Soleus. It is a well supported product, the company continues to release really good watches and the have been doing GPS watches for a while.

GPS watches today give you a lot of features. You name it, they have it: distance alerts, maps, music players, virtual pacing, and heart rate monitoring.

The Forerunner 10 is a relatively inexpensive GPS running watch that has these features: It tracks your distance, speed/pace and calories. It also identifies your personal records and this can provide motivation along the way to help you with your training goals.

For those who haven’t used a GPS watch before, don’t worry, they are easy to use. Any of your running times can start with the simple press of a button. 35+ years ago when I started running, and when the new sport watches came on to the market, none had more than two features. I recall my watch having an illumination/light button and a pacer that was essentially a beeping sound that you kept pace with. So the pacer really wasn’t a true pacer; you just kept pace with a continuous beep. The creation of GPS technology has brought training many levels up by tracking location and speed at the same time. With my antiquated watch, if I slowed down going up grades, I had to restart the pacer because it was beeping too fast for me to keep pace with. I would reset it to a slower pace, but this was plain annoying, and interrupting. Modern watches are way past the old wind ups.

My watch couldn’t actually calculate  my current pace to my target pace because it had no data inputs. On the other hand, the GARMIN GPS watch gets a satellite connection when you hit your button and start running. It’s all done for you. Now, you can calculate your pace, speed and calories burned all on the same screen properly.

The Forerunner is a simple, light watch. For someone looking for an unpretentious training watch I recommend purchasing it in black or the black with red. The Forerunner comes in multiple colors but the black model has a bit of a larger watch face and wristband than the colored versions. All the Forerunners are slim and fashionable for everyday use.

The battery life is 10 days for a typical use of 30 minutes a day. If you use it continuously with the GPS, then count on a battery life of 5 hours.

There is feedback that you get from the alerts. Every time you complete a mile you get a beep. Your time gets flashed for that particular mile. Complete your run and save your time. I like to get a summary of total times, distances, average paces and calories.

Upload your info to the Garmin Connect tool to see your run on a map.

Lastly, I like the reinforced, one piece wrist watch band. I have had models where the band separated from the watch. GARMIN makes a good sturdy watch. This is a good training tool for your run training. Some models such as the Forerunner 620, the 220, the 910xt and the 310xt cost a bit more but of course have more features.  I think you’ll find Garmin has a good place among the other brands.