GPS watches

If you want to drop a lot of money for something that's not really super accurate go ahead. Depending on what you run, they can be as much as 10% off, which makes distance, pace, and everything else theoretical. Smartphone with run trackr or mapmyrun just as good.

I've found Garmins to be off by less than 1% if at all. Oddly, the place they seem off by the most is on a track. I don't have an explanation for that, but it seems true almost every time. They can be off 2-3% there, which is a pretty good chunk. You won't find any off by 10%; that would be ridiculously inaccurate.

I think most people who own them are very happy that they do. I use mine all the time, except for in races and in track workouts. I just like the feel of a Timex better for those things.

One thing that I've had to learn is to listen to my body and not the watch. Some days I'll accidentally let it push me as I try to step down the pace.

What I enjoy is listening to runners rafter races saying things like,

That 5k was 3.2...the course was 3.05...the course was 3.3.

You'll want to get in on that action.

At peak I train 100+ per week. I use my Motoactv GPS Watch for most of that mileage. However i'm usually just using it as a glorified stopwatch. I also love gadgets though so new and shiny technology tends to get my attention. The motoactv has a music player built in which I do use often on my morning runs. It also has bluetooth so it's nice to use wireless headphones.

I find myself using the GPS more often when i'm not in my hometown. Having a map available is nice when you lack a decent sense of direction. Having the coaching feature on is nice to; when you schedule a run (say 3 min on 90sec off @ 4:50/mile) it will tell you if your too slow or fast without looking at the watch.

wha huh? wrote:

If you want to drop a lot of money for something that's not really super accurate go ahead. Depending on what you run, they can be as much as 10% off, which makes distance, pace, and everything else theoretical.

They are definitely off enough that they are not accurate.

If you're going a straight line and don't make any stops they might be within 30 yards for a mile.

I use online mapping, my trusty casio marathon watch, and wouldn't waste any money on a gps. There is no reason to pay more for something that doesn't work nearly as well.

Coopington wrote:

You won't find any off by 10%; that would be ridiculously inaccurate.

i wish. i bought a garmin 610. thing is a piece of junk. shortchanges my runs by 5-15% when i compare it to mapmyrun. it shows you the route you did and it sometimes says im up to 100 yards off from the road. claims i cut corners through large buildings. i got it in the winter and the heart rate monitor already doesnt work. i wear my $40 timex now

Don't waste your money. I got a Garmin a couple years ago and never wear it anymore because it is consistently inaccurate.

No kidding. The map that your Garmin is drawing is not using all of its data points, hence cutting corners, and is not guaranteed to match up with the satellite imagery used to make the map. Ever notice that there are even minor differences in locations of things (Longitude/Latitude) on Google Earth from update to update. It's not exact on those maps.I highly doubt a Garmin was off by 15%. That's approximately 240m per mile off. Even 5% is very hard to believe- that's off by 80m per mile. I run with mine on nearly a daily basis and it's beeping in the same spots +/- 10m every day, and they match up with the same spots that I've wheeled and mapped using Google Earth.There's a loop I do for tempo runs that's 0.80 miles miles according to Google Earth. My Garmin nails it every time even when I do 6 or 7 laps of it; it's still right on. Mine matches up almost exactly with all of my mapped runs.Now, I will say this- I'm a big supporter of Garmin because of their accuracy, but I am NOT a fan of the Nike watch. I bought that and returned it because it was occasionally off by 5%+. I've never had an issue with my Garmin and I love using it on a daily basis. Yesterday I did a 13 miler with it and when I mapped it (very carefully), my Garmin was only 0.02 miles different from my map. That's 0.1%, and that's typical in my experience.My experiences are with the 405 and the 205.

cenotaph wrote:

Coopington wrote:

You won't find any off by 10%; that would be ridiculously inaccurate.

i wish. i bought a garmin 610. thing is a piece of junk. shortchanges my runs by 5-15% when i compare it to mapmyrun. it shows you the route you did and it sometimes says im up to 100 yards off from the road. claims i cut corners through large buildings. i got it in the winter and the heart rate monitor already doesnt work. i wear my $40 timex now

spartan15 wrote:

... i know many runners are against them because of how exact theyre and it makes you forget about running off feel. ...

Thanks for reminding me to charge my watch tonight!

I have a Garmin 110 and like it, but not as much as some of my friends who are practically addicted to their GPS. I got it because I needed to SLOW DOWN on easy runs and at the beginning of my races. It helped with that but I don't need it anymore.

About (not) running off feel, the way I do it now is turn on the watch and forget about it until after the run. It's good to compare the pace with how I felt, just another data point for developing pace knowledge. The only time I look at it when running is when doing a tempo run, or when someone asks what our pace is. For speedwork I just use a stopwatch, see below. I don't wear the GPS at all for road races, my results are better going strictly by feel. In fact I would say the best use for the GPS is the tempo or sub-tempo (marathon pace) run.

About (not) being accurate, yes this happens. Buildings, trees, overpasses, and so on have an effect, and even satellite coverage varies. I know one place in my town where the GPS will not register any motion for about 1/4 mile. For the most part these LOCAL inaccuracies will average out over the course of a longer run. You can expect it to be off by about 1/4 mile in a marathon, which is 1%. Unfortunately, it might also be off by about 1/4 mile in a 5K, which is 8%. But 1-2% is typical.

As for being wildly inaccurate on the track, this has to do with polling of the satellites. It only checks for position at some interval (say every 10 seconds) and draws a straight line between the points, so will show you running across the infield. But the whole point of the track is that it is an accurately measured distance, it's the last place you would need a GPS.

This polling problem crops up in any course with a lot of turns. So if you run on city streets you are going to be unhappy with the accuracy. If like me you run long out and backs in the suburbs then it's acceptable.

They're pretty good. Just relax, if you have $150 you can part with, you will have fun. To put these responses in perspective, there are people on this site who think running shoes are a bad idea. It's only a watch.

J.R. wrote:

wha huh? wrote:

If you want to drop a lot of money for something that's not really super accurate go ahead. Depending on what you run, they can be as much as 10% off, which makes distance, pace, and everything else theoretical.

They are definitely off enough that they are not accurate.

If you're going a straight line and don't make any stops they might be within 30 yards for a mile.

I use online mapping, my trusty casio marathon watch, and wouldn't waste any money on a gps. There is no reason to pay more for something that doesn't work nearly as well.

How accurate is your ability to track mileage on mapmyrun? How much time does it take you to map a run?

I use a watch understanding its limitations, but I also press a couple of buttons and have a reasonably good measure of how far I ran. I can use the time I would have had to use to plot the run to do something productive like surf Letsrun.com