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Using a Garmin Forerunner 305 as a Training Tool

February 17, 2011, 3:00 pm

By Billie Hara

Back in November, George posted Favorite Health and Fitness Tools (a reader response roundup) after an earlier post about hardware and software tools that help keep us fit and healthy.  George’s posts outlined many helpful tools, and the readers of his posts offered even more, tools that help them workout or keep their workouts interesting.  One of those readers, brianborchers, mentioned the Garmin 305 Forerunner.  At about the same time my daughter—who is training for another half-marathon—showed me the one she uses.  Reading how useful the Garmin is from a ProfHacker point of view and then seeing how the Garmin helps my daughter in her training, I wanted one.

I’m not training for a half marathon, but I am striving to take care of myself, and this includes running on a regular basis.  I’ve been doing a Couch-2-5K program for a few weeks, and using the Garmin 305 has helped me stay active and on the C25K schedule because I appreciate the technology.  In other words, I’ll go for a run if I can input data into the Garmin that will later show me how far I’ve progressed in my workout.

The Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor is what Garmin calls a “wrist mounted GPS device” that delivers accurate heart rate monitoring and performance tracking.  While not a traditional GPS navigation device, the Garmin 305 does include mapping and routing capabilities.  It is also waterproof.

The GPS function is nice, but the truly important function of the 305 is the amount of data it provides:  distance, elevation, calories burned.  It includes lap and pace modes.  With the included heartrate chest strap, the 305 can monitor heartrate in a number of training situations.  The Garmin Forerunner 305 allows you to decide what information you need to see at any given point.  You can configure the monitor to display the calories burned, your pace, your lap pace, your distance, your heartrate, and the overall time of your exercise session.  You can display some of these or none of these.  It’s your choice.  With the Garmin’s Virtual Partner, you’ve got a virtual competitor to help you increase your time or distance.  My daughter’s comment was that the VP is a little difficult to use, but it’s helpful for some.

As ProfHacker reader brianborchers noted in his comment, the Garmin 305 can connect to the Training Center software via a USB connection, and your workout history can be uploaded and stored on your computer.  The software is both PC and Mac compatible, and it allows you to define courses on your computer that you can then upload to your 305.  This feature might come in very handy when you travel to a conference or take a trip away from home.  You can upload possible routes into the Garmin 305 before you travel so that when you arrive, you are ready to roll.

All of these are good reasons to use a Garmin 305.  My reason—other than I liked the technology—was that it accurately told me how far I’d run.  I wasn’t a good guesser.  After my first run with the Garmin, I realized how “off” I’d been.  I ran the same route I’d run before, but instead of the four miles at a 10-minute pace I’d assumed, I actually ran 2.5 miles at a 15-minute pace.  From those lowly—but accurate—numbers I’ve been able to see my distance increase and my time decrease.

The only downside for me has been the Garmin’s size.  Compared to an average wrist-watch, the Garmin is huge and a bit bulky.  But it would be unable to do all that it does if it came in a smaller size.  That’s a trade off I’m willing to accept.

The Garmin 305 has been a great motivator for me to get out and get some exercise.  Maybe the Garmin 305 would work for you, but you might consider many of the other Garmin products available.  Some do more than the 305 and some do less.  You can check out the Garmin site and choose a product that might better fit your needs.

How about you?  What kind of motivators do you use to get exercise into your life? Do you use a Garmin or other similar device to help you train?  Please leave comments below.

[Images by Billie Hara and used under the Creative Commons license.]

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  • brianborchers

    I’m glad you like the Garmin 305. As I posted earlier, I’m a huge fan.

    Let me mention some other things that help me to stay motivated to exercise:

    I make a habit of posting my exercise on my facebook status, including maps of my running routes and hiking trips. I get lots of comments on these postings that encourage me to keep it up.

    I run every Sunday morning with an informal group. In order to run together, we have to slow down to the pace of the slowest runner in the group- this is typically much slower than my normal pace, but I find that I really enjoy having a conversation with my friends while jogging at an easy 11 minutes a mile. This is simply a different kind of running from the speed workouts that I do to prepare for 5K races.

    I’ve also found that I really enjoy group exercise classes, particularly spinning (indoor cycling.) Again, the main attraction is that I can do this with friends and the activity becomes a social event. One nice thing about spinning is that everyone in the class can get an appropriate workout for their fitness level by adjusting the tension control on the bike. Spinning is one of the few activities besides running in which I can keep my heart rate elevated close to the anaerobic threshold.

  • bleckb

    I’m a big fan of Garmin, having used the Edge 305 for a number of years and an Edge 705 for the last year (and now there’s an 805 with a touch screen!). These are cycling units, nothing you’d want to strap to your wrist for a run, unless you wanted to celebrate your geekdom to the extreme. One criticism I’d offer to the Garmin products is that the calories burned tends to be about 20 percent high, give or take. I use an online diet tracker, weight by date, and have used another, fitday, and both of those, when I plug in my exercise, rate my calories burned at about the 20 percent lower than my Garmin device. Another is that the file format isn’t readily transferable to other gps file formats, making it hard to plug in data to such online tools as “mapmyride” and “bikely.”

  • tcstanley

    I too am not training for the Tour de France, but I use the Garmin 500 for my bicycle training. It has helped me learn to keep my heart rate up, and to keep my cadence up, which in turn has helped me increase distance and speed. I’ll never be ready for a bicycle race, but I do ride my bike more often and have been able to lose weight and make myself feel much better.

  • willynilly

    This will work well – like setting out a bowl of ice cubes and expecting that your home will be air conditioned.

  • chemistry_guy

    In California, tuition at the Cal State Universities and the Community Colleges for in-state students can be amazingly low, on the order of $3K to $5k per year for a full course load. The bankrupt state picks up the rest, on the strength of the worthy notion that educating people does more to boost the economy than perhaps any other investments the people of California could make, to the benefit of all.

    However, the opportunity cost of forgoing a (probably pretty crappy) job and income is so low that many people who really don’t have the makeup to thrive in college nonetheless make the ultimately foolish choice to go to school and fail at developmental math 4 times, never finish their programs, and end up costing the state a lot of money in subsidies in all forms, including, but not limited to, Cal Grants.

    California is solvent in name only. Something drastic must be done, and this seems like a good step, however painful.

    Sadly, though, it seems to me many capable students will be caught in this net.

    It would be nice if the state could hold individual students accountable, but those who fail in their academic programs are certainly likely to default on their loans, so this needs to be done at the institutional level.

  • AbdulKareemaWheat

    Life would be so much simpler without that pesky 1st Amendment, eh?

  • panacea

    Ms. Yoder committed a HIPAA violation. The school did the right thing to dismiss her.

  • panacea

    This case, along with a similar case in Kansas, has caused our nursing faculty to re-evaluate our policies on electronic devices and social media specifically to prevent this kind of thing from happening with one of our students.

    Our policy is crystal clear: if you have an electronic device such as a cell phone in the hospital, you can be dismissed. If you post unprofessional statements about patients online, you can be dismissed.

  • pianiste

    “Legacy admissions.” Such a nice-sounding phrase. How about “family connections” or “daddy/mommy pulling strings” or “to the eating club born” or, if you still want something pretentiously euphemistic, “future donor consideration”?

     

  • profmurph

    Hmm. When the author stops all affirmative action programs, then legacy programs should stop also at public universities. Until then I prefer to have students who might actually succeed instead of those who are not qualified to be admitted. Take your choice admission through government force or admission to the offspring of grads.

  • profmurph

    Unfortunately merit has nothing to do with admission for minorities, it is simply skin-color or ethnicity instead. While it may be admirable to let “anyone” in for these reasons, the more likely to succeed student is one admitted through legacy. For the most part these are qualified students who could be admitted to the majority of four-year public colleges.

  • profmurph

    Why not? In the real world this is how groups and organizations function.

  • saraclausen

    John Coleman, president of Haverford 1967-77, said that students spend 4 years at a college, presidents 10 years, but faculty spend their careers there, had a much greater investment in it than anyone else, and governance properly belonged with them. He made the comment in 1969, long before the idea of running institutions like a business gained any traction, and of course Haverford is a Quaker school with its curious notion of decision making by consensus.

  • cdmpmsed

    This reminds me of something PF Kluge mentioned in his book “Alma Mater” that has stuck with me in the years since reading that book in graduate school.  I don’t remember the direct quote, but the gist was that if a university was like an island getaway, students would be the tourists and administrators the tour guides - but the faculty would be the natives.  It is their village, indeed.

  • robjenkins

    That’s fine, as long as the administrator is actually interested in the good of the institution, and not just in what’s best for him or her. I’ve known some administrators like that, but sadly, I can’t say they’re in the majority. Even after having been an administrator myself for many years, dealing with all the frustrations of trying to work with obstinate and opinionated faculty, I would still say that it’s far more important to the health of an institution for tenured faculty members to keep administrators in check than vice-versa. Given some of the administrative abuses I’ve witnessed over the years, I say thank goodness for obstinate and opionated faculty.

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