Garmin forerunner 205 GPS training

A week ago I bought my new garmin forerunner 205 gps watch online and I’ve been training with it for a week now and so I have my first impressions about it which, so far, are great.

After many years training with just a heart rate monitor and basing my training days only on my heart rate, 70, 80, 90 % of my rate I wanted to do it while monitoring exactly how far and how fast my run gets. Not that I didn’t know it before as we all know how long we run and our speed, but this is way more accurate than it was before.

Despite the 205 is not the last garmin gps watch it is full of options and it lets you change between 3 different sports (runnning, clycling, other). For now I’ve only used cycling and running. While using it you can really make your circuit different every day and exactly run the same distance or the same speed so you do not get bored of the same streets, parks…

Let’s see the functionality of the gps watch. Firstly the speed with which it detects the gps signal, I cannot say that it is immediately, but it is quite fast, less than 1 min (way less) at least where I live in Barcelona. The gps is quite accurate as it takes the signal from as many satellites as it detects, but any way it is taking measurements every 5 meters (by default) which is quite ok. However it can lood very unreliable the first time that you use it, but it is because it is calibrating itself once you’ve run your first 200m everything is smooth and fine. The 205 also has 3 different screens which you can personalize displaying up to 4 data on each, this can be time, speed, lap time, distance, time (current time), max speed, calories,…) so quite a lot of options that helps you to control your training and your effort during your run. One of the best features of the forerunner 205 is its bring me back home feature. As it is a gps based watch your trac is set in the watch so if you are lost in the forest, mountain… you can use thi
s feature to get back to the start point. Once you activate this option, the watch will show you your route and it will give you indications on the screen to send you back to the starting point of your ride, walk or run which is quite useful if you train off road.

But is that all what the forerunner gives you? No. One of the best features that the garming 205 offers is not in the watch itself, but in the garmin training software which comes with it. With this software (windows and mac os compatible) you can  transfer your data from the watch to your computer and keep track and analyze your run or ride with quite a good precision. The software shows you the route on the map, the speed at any time and the high of your training. Analyzing this is very valuable for your daily training as if you are use to run always the same route you can see your best and your weak during your training, so you can fix it for a better performance.

This has been a very brief review on the garmin 205 gps watch, but I hope that it is useful for you if you are planning to buy one of this sport gadgets. I totally recommend it and if you are a frequent runner this is a must to have as good shoes are too