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Garmin Forerunner 620
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Your link worked, love that you can go for a gentle jog at that speed with that low a heart rate impressive
The stats are awesome aren't they!!
Chaps, any impressions about gps accuracy compared to older models? My 305 often has me cutting corners and even running about 10 feet off the path along the Thames. It's also spooked by the same buildings every time.
Anyone fed their trace into google earth yet?
will get one of these watches for xmas but need to decide which one. but looking at Toros garmin page i think im going the other way book trunk
im not sure any of the additional info will make me alter my training. Cadence, jiggle & contact with the floor is interesting for about a week but i cant see myself giving a monkeys about it for long. so might save myself a £100 and go 220. unless im missing something.
Dean - you also lose VO2 estimate (available in books and tables), recovery advisor (again there are other sources but this I liked today), there is also a training effect calculator. GPS looks a lot better than 210. I would get a 210 though £100 (i did on offer) if i was looking for a basic HRM/GPS.
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Booktrunk - yes very cool. Really enjoyed it although it does vibrate a lot! Connected - vibrate, lap - vibrate! I may change that in future.
Mutley - have you seen my garmin map? Don't know whaput tuning it on Google would prove or how to do it. DCRainmaker says he is going to do an accuracy check soon. Also how accurate is Google earth? I assume it's WGS 84 datum like GPS but will look.
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DeanR Toros is also using a 620.. Same watch
bottom left corner shows the watch.,
Toro - Great to hear that it´s living up to the hype what does the recovery check that appears at the end of a run actually tell you? Is it just how quickly your heart beats return to normal?
What about the recovery time advisor, do you think it´s accurate?
Finally the VO2 race predicator, are the times about right?
Caferey - Recovery Check is designed to assess your recovery level after the first 6 minutes of the run, and it’ll display a message to you shortly thereafter: Good, Fair, Poor. Not looked into what these mean. Good to see 2.5 weeks post marathon I was good. Whereas Recovery Advisor is a post-run message that tells you how long you should wait before attempting another hard run workout. 18hrs it said ie tomorrow AM is fine. Accurate - I assess it's reasonable given that was an easy run today and I probably could have run further. Tomorrow will be a rest day I think anyway. I can see this being useful as I build for next year's marathon.
VO2 max - based on an easy run only (a lot of calculation I imagine rather than using max HR/Speed/5km best) is almost spot on. I am about a minute quicker across all off them with a vDot (Daniels) of 56-59 (depending how hard I run or how well I perform)!
Check out http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/11/garmin-forerunner-review.html for the ultimate low down.
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Booktrunk - I think Dean means he is thinking about getting the 220 as the extra 620 graphs don't do anything for him. We'll see!
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Ahh
indeed. good luck dean 
whatever you choose will be good.
Toro,
I couldn't do it from your or BT's workout but on my own Garmin Connect workouts I can export to Google Earth and study the gps trace. It's usually pretty good but as I noted above, sometimes it strays a little and I was wondering if the 220/620 had smoothed this out.
Some of us remember running with the original Garmin 201. Things have moved on a little since then
I remember the first units but I was a Polar boy until recently! A johnny come lately!
I changed the map to satellite (Bing/Microsoft) and it didn't cut corners but didn't follow the road/path. Below is google earth. Again no corners cut. But it does go over houses this will be a Google Earth/Geodesy problem I guess. I will have a look but I imagine it is down to way GPS in WGS 84 is overlaid on the spheroid that they used for the mapping. Hope that helps
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Cheers, my reason for posting was for you fine people to convince me to upgrade. The vo2 and recovery could be the winning argument. I have coach led training plans but it would be interesting to see if the watch agreed with my recovery or it thought I was being a lightweight. Or would it now mean I'm ignoring the advice of both my coach and my watch! Hmmmm leaning towards the 620 now
My 620 says I'm a lightweight and I should be getting my arse in gear and going sub 4h instead of 4:36 I tend to agree with it... But that's hard work.
I was very impressed that it worked that out an accurate VO2 max off an easy run.
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Seems in the first few days that everyone who has one is happy with it. DC's review updated on 4th November looks like there are very few drawbacks, and those are unlikely to affect the majority of users, excepting the bike bit.
One of these will be gracing my wrist soon.....
Timex had a speed & distance system before then, the gps unit was the size of a cigarette packet and strapped to your arm, linked to a watch. No logging of runs, just time, distance, average speed, the basics. The garmin 101 & 201 were a leap forward from that.
How do you know it was accurate?
CD - Assumed accurate I suppose that should read based on previous performances and look up tables as I didn't conduct it hooked up to a machine.
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OK, in the right ballpark then. It'll be interesting to see how that varies from run to run.
I can't find the Garmin 620 in either the store here or sweatshop, for those that have bought one already could you post the link please to where you got it from?
Thanks.
HC - Store here not available since last week (didn't want you saving 15% on them) and someone posted on Sub 3 thread that they are Out of Stock (again).
Give them a call as they are the exclusive supplier until Dec. They have had very high demand speaking to them over last week and are not receiving enough from Garmin.
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Well, I was in town today and wandered into my local Sweatshop and succumbed. Am now the owner of a new 220, which is currently charging. I'll play with it a bit and get it set up to my liking this afternoon and then use it in anger tomorrow morning.
One thing I'll have to get used to is the up and down buttons being on the opposite side from my old 305.
Great stuff! Look forward to seeing what you think of it. Light though aren't they!
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They're tiny. Probably too small for my tired old eyes to be able to read a three-field data screen, but we shall see. Just set it up, which was easy enough.
Odd feature set on the 220, have to say. Garmin have included the bluetooth and tracking via smartphone feature while dropping the virtual partner. I would have done it the other way round, but tbh although I used to run to the VP all the time I haven't for a while now so maybe it's not such a killer feature after all.
No virtual racer either now on either which is a surprise as that must have promoted garmin connect.
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Toro - Great to hear that´s it´s spot on. I wonder as you wear the heart strap and start building up runs over the weeks and months it "learns" more about you. The fact that after a run it´s very close to Daniel´s times is incredible.
Thanks for the link to DC rainmaker review. He doesn´t seem to know really what happens in the first 6 mins after a workout to have a good/fair etc recovery. So if he doesn´t know, only someone at Garmin does.
First 6 during workout gives good/fair assessment. After gives a time To recover. Doubt it learns but I think some sessions will work better than others (vo2 max session should give better results as less maths for it to do).
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I was interested to test out the internal accelerometer. Would it really be a substitute for a well calibrated footpod? I do a lot of intervals on treadmills, a lot of easy miles outdoors. Rather than trust the treadmill calibration, I use the footpod to maintain consistency across a number of treadmills. Garmin controls the interval time / distance / pace, rather than the treadmill
Tested against the one treadmill that comes up within a couple of seconds against my 610/footpod pace. Quick test today came up as follows:
(details: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/404013344)
Treadmill was brought up to speed before recording ave pace. A couple of 6 mile runs outdoors for accelerometer calibration.
Treadmill Garmin 620
mph min/m min/m
6.0 10:00 10:37
6.5 9:14 9:20
7.0 8:34 8:36
7.5 8:00 8:08
8.0 7:30 7:47
8.5 7:04 7:33
9.0 6:40 7:20
9.5 6:19 7:21
10.0 6:00 7:16
10.5 5:43 7:00
From the above it is most accurate around my outdoor recovery run pace
Conclusion: accelerometer seems more of a gimmick than a serious tool. Should be fine for the occassional gps drop out around buildings / tunnels, but in its current form I need the footpod for speedwork indoors. Shame there is no way of overriding its internal calibration.
Best feature of the day - a lap button that works faultlessly. Very dodgy on the 610s' I have had
That sounds about right, A-R. My 305 goes haywire in the same places all the time as I go past office blocks and through underpasses. Not a huge deal but an improvement would be welcome.
Well, I think I've got my 220 set up the way I want it. The sky is blue and the sun in shining so there's nothing for it, out for a lumber now round the streets of Reading with my new toy.