Looking for a GPS running watch? Few would argue that Garmin's Forerunner line is not among the leading contenders in the GPS running watch market.
After their widely acclaimed Forerunner 205/305 and in more recent times the 405, Garmin have just released two upgrades to their popular sports timepieces, the Forerunner 405CX, an upgrade to the 405 and the Forerunner 310XT which improves on the 205/305 watches.
The 310XT is the more revolutionary of the two upgrades with water resistance and a much longer battery life, but the 405CX, which has improved calorie measuring abilities is selling at a price very close to the 405, so is a worthy purchase if you are buying a new watch.
One of the reasons for the Forerunner's popularity is the watch's support features that can be used in all types of running training. One such feature (or group of features), that caters to the diverse types of running sessions are the Forerunner Workout Types.
The Forerunner watches support four different workout types:
Simple Workouts
Heart Rate Workouts
Interval Workouts; and
Advanced workout types. This article explores only Interval Workouts and how they can be applied to Interval or repetition training. Our website has more information on the other Forerunner workout types.
Most runners who have trained seriously are familiar with interval training. For those who are not, Interval training is simply a series of hard runs with a recovery period. For example an interval training session might be: 10x 400m with 3 minutes rest after each 400m hard run.
Forerunner Interval Workouts can be used to track your repetition workouts and with it's GPS abilities, can signal when to start or stop based on the distance you have run. This allows you to workout by distance, even in areas where you have no foreknowledge of the actual distance in advance.
Interval Workouts, unlike Advanced Workouts can be created on the wrist-watch. To create one, you first set the type of workout, (distance or time), the repetition duration or time, the recovery time or distance and the number of repetitions in the workout. Forerunner Interval Workouts also lets you set an optional warm-up and cool-down period at the beginning and end.
As you approach the end of each interval, an alarm sounds and counts down until the next interval. An interval can be manually ended at any time with the LAP/RESET button. If you include a warm-up, the Forerunner will switch to the warm-up phase when you start the session (press LAP to end the warm-up and start your first interval). If you set a cool-down, the watch enters this phase after your last interval.
Garmin has spent a lot of time and effort designing their Forerunner watches to deliver the features that runner's need. The company's innovations have driven it's Forerunner watches to the forefront of the running watch market. We have only begun to scratch the surface with Interval Workouts. Much more information on Forerunner watches can be found on our website.
