Yay for running materialism!

My trusty Garmin Forerunner 10 has served me pretty well over the past couple of years, but it has never quite been the same since I smashed it up after my dramatic Cardiff Half 2015 wipeout – both the strap and the usb connector have been a bit suspect ever since.

I’ve been on the lookout for a replacement for a while, and finally settled on the Garmin Forerunner 235. I went for it primarily for the in-built heart rate monitor on the wrist, and also because of the larger screen allowing me to see more information on the go at once. I asked Anna to buy it for me for my birthday, and now it is in my possession!

Watch Watch close-up Bask in the glory of my arty photos

My first impressions are excellent. The GPS tracking is as good as I expected (of a similar standard to my previous watch), and the heart rate monitoring seems to be fairly accurate. I had read some reviews saying it wasn’t particularly reliable, but so far it seems to be pretty good. I think the best part about the watch is the clarity of the screen, and the ease at which one can see a large amount of data when running.

Being able to set custom lap lengths is a feature I thought I would like, and it’s proving that way. This run, which has two 5 minute progression intervals at the end, was much easier to track because I could reset the lap counter at the start of each one, and then use the per-lap view to see my pace for the lap.

Any complaints? The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that the live pace tracking seems slightly less reliable than the Forerunner 10, which was excellent in that area. I guess there’s a chance my pace just hasn’t been as consistent on the few runs I’ve been on with the new watch so far.

Anyway, training proper starts this week, after a fairly debaucherous couple of weeks including drunken birthday celebrations this past weekend. My first race in a while is the Frome 10k in three weeks – I’m looking forward to it!

If you want to see more details of this week’s and previous weeks’ runs, check out my Strava profile.