my new garmin forerunner 410 gps-enabled sports watch

my new garmin forerunner 410 gps-enabled sports watch, perfect for keeping track of my runs!

for christmas m surprised me with the garmin forerunner 410 gps watch. it was very unexpected as i did not have that down on my christmas wish list. of course since sometime last year i had been eyeing it but the price was still above $200 and i told myself and him that i wouldn't want to get it just yet or was not in any rush to get it. i still had my nike ipod + receiver i was using and that worked just fine for keeping track of my runs.

now, i'm so glad i got that garmin watch. shortly after christmas i went out on a run with both the watch and my nike+/ipod and discovered that the nike+ receiver had died on me. it was taking forever for the ipod to find the receiver/sensor. i guess after 4 years and 5 months, it finally gave out. it was okay while it lasted. we definitely went through our ups/downs. actually, it was more like a love/hate relationship. i loved it when it synced all my runs properly and hated it when it'd die (freeze up) on me halfway through my runs or didn't sync up my runs properly. i put over 1,500 miles on that thing! pretty impressive for myself personally. who knew i would run that many miles in a 4-year span?!

with the garmin gps watch plus heart rate monitor, i am loving it. i like the fact that with the gps my mileage are actual and not a guestimate. i mean, c'mon?! it's a gps and it's garmin! what's great is with the heart rate monitor, i can see how fit or unfit i am after i've synced my data up onto their site. the initial sync setup was a bit annoying, but after the setup, syncing runs was a piece of cake. i love seeing my average heart rate during a run or the maximum heart rate. my goal is to get my average down to a pretty good number. anywhere within the 140-150 range is great. right now it's a little higher than i'd like. maybe around 160ish? that's still not bad, but i'd like it lower. plus, my pace/speed's not very fast at the moment. i'm hoping over time my pace will pick up and i can get back to what it was before baby #2. right now i'm very slow.

overall, i'm loving the garmin watch + heart rate monitor. i don't miss nike and apple at all. with the sf marathon coming up in june, i'm hoping to do lots of training runs with this gadget. i know it'll be great. i look forward to many years of running data collected with this device. i can't wait to see where i am a year from now, two years, and so on. :)

if you're interested in getting this exact gamin 410 gps watch yourself or any other garmin gps watches, you can definitely check them out on amazon.