What is a watch these days??????

Back in the day when I was growing up a watch usually just told you what time it was. If you were a runner you could even get a watch that would allow you to time a race or record splits if you bothered to read the directions which I thought was the height of techno cool. I have been pondering the question of what a watch is and what it is suppose to do for me lately since I have become further entwined in training for triathlons. Among endurance sports athletes triathletes stand out for their daring to try innovative training techniques and their willingness to drop cash for all sorts of toys. In many ways I think I am very old school preferring the tried and true method over high tech expensive fixes I see many triathletes use to overcome all sorts of self inflicted deficiences. I of course have my own deficiences but usually don't try to fix them with cash--at least not yet.

A great example are those new triathletes who go out and buy the most expensive and usually lightest bike they can find and either upgrade the wheels to carbon fiber at the time of purchase or shortly thereafter. Why you ask? Well the magazines all say they will make a rider faster and they see the top triathletes riding with them and it becomes a wanderlust thing for them. OK---but we are not talking a whole lot of time relative to one's overall performance--maybe 2 or 3 minutes over the course of a 112 mile course for your average new triathlete with the greatest benefits going to those that can average over 20 mph which new triathletes usually can't do. Training smarter and with a greater sense of increasing one's cadence on the bike will easily lead to an increase well beyond that paltry sum of minutes these guys will recover for the 1000 to 2000 dollar purchase of new wheels.

So, I approach the subject of upgrading my watch with some trepidation and only would have considered it when I realized I was the only one consistently showing up to training runs without a heart rate monitor watch. It probably took me about 3 months to figure that out though since the model everyone uses (Garmin 305 forerunner) gets put on the handlebars of their bike when they are not running and I just assumed it was a standard bike speed/cadence monitor until I began seeing them wear it on runs too. In addition to being a heart rate monitor, the garmin 305 also has gps capability and most importantly for me, will give you your average and current pace per mile. You also have to wear a heart rate monitor strap across your chest too which I think will be weird.

I went with my usual group a few months back and it was quite a scene when we were ready to begin the run except everyone else was waiting to start until their watches locked onto a satellite. It was fairly comical and then became slightly annoying when I felt like the only real runner willing to go without waiting for the high tech doodad to work properly. They need to lock onto the satellite to get distance and to allow the watch to calculate pace during the run (or so I've been told). It took about 3 minutes since we were surrounded by tall buildings in the Central West End and they couldn't easily lock on.

When doing intervals at the track in high school our coach would sometimes have us check our heart rates and wouldn't let us start a new interval until the heart rate dropped below 180 beats per minute. Not infrequently I would check my heart rate with two fingers immediately after an interval and the beats per minute were over 200 (I think 220 bpm was my heart ready to explode from running hard and fast) but it always took at least 10 seconds to get that information once we stopped running. The Garmin watch will give it to us as we are running and also save it to be downloaded later to a computer. Computer geeks love the Garmins because you can download the information into charts and graphs and plot your run(s) and compare your heart rate and pace info with previous efforts on the same course etc. It sounds interesting but without actually using it before seems kind of superfluous. Also, the top coaches are guiding their athletes via heart rate monitor readings telling them to keep their heart rate between 150-160 bpm during a 6 mile run for example in some of the triathlon books I have read. One of the best triathletes in history, Mark Allen, credits heart rate training with helping him dramatically improve his racing and training management.

So, while I have periodically dipped into the pool of heart rate training info, I have never gone all in so to speak. I looked up the cost of the Garmin a few months ago and the price was about $230 bucks which for a watch seemed crazy. They have come out with a newer, sleeker version though and the price of the 305 has dropped significantly. So, when Black Friday rolled around today I was able to order one from Amazon for only 150 bucks which seems like a great deal but is still far more than I have ever spent for a watch before. Also, the 305 is pretty bulky which kind of worries me but I just couldn't fork over the 280-300 bucks for the newer sleeker model. Oh yeah, the newer model (Garmin 405) does not attach to the bike and is not as good for the multisport transition etc. and the reviews on it have been mixed so I stuck with the tried and true which all my tri friends have.

I hope to receive the watch by the middle of next week and to give it some use in training runs before I head over to Hawaii for the marathon. Part of my motivation to buy it was to use it during the marathon to monitor my pace and heart rate. I am not sure whether it can plot the course too--maybe, but I expect there will be mile markers so I will know roughly how far there is to the finish at all times. However, knowing my average pace per mile while I am running will be a huge benefit to me as I can monitor if I am going out too fast or slowing down too much beyond my perceived feel for such matters. No matter how well I know myself the objective nature of the data will be there to see and record for posterity. Or so the theory goes anyway. I may try it on and hate how bulky it feels on my wrist. Part of my reluctance to buy one before now has been my fear that I will become overly reliant on the data but I have come to conclude that fear is probably overblown. I am pretty good at being able to turn off things that I rely on too much when necessary. So, a new toy is on its way here as we speak. Stay tuned for updates on the heart rate monitor watch....will it be a success or utter failure?