7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Must Have for Pace minded runner
Date of Review: May 28, 2008
The Bottom Line: A must have if you want to get more serious about your training
I purchased my Garmin 305 over a year ago. I love this product!
Start Up takes a bit of time but the added info really does help you get accurate information. You have to put in gender & weight. From that they give you general heart rate parameters. If you download the software you can change the heart rate parameters and "Zones". It is really neat because you can then upload the information from your computer to your wrist unit.
On general settings you can customize your screen so that during your workout you can see the information that you want. You can have up to 4 different info boxes up on the display at 1 time. It can display things like
Cadence Laps
Cadence- average Pace
Cadence-Lap Pace Average
Calories Pace Best
Date Pace Lap
Distance Pace Last Lap
Distance Last Lap Pace Zone
Distance Paused Sunrise
Elevation Sunset
GPS Accuracy Time
Grade Time Average Lap
Heading Time Lap
Heart Rate Time Last Lap
Heart Rate Average Time Paused
Heart Rate Lap Time of Day
Heart Rate Zone
As you can see you can customize the display by choosing from 1-4 of the above options. NOTE for cadence you need to purchase additional accessories.
My favorite feature is the virtual partner. You can tell the partner you are going to run 10 miles and you are going to do it in 45min and instead of the normal display you see 2 runners racing and it tells you weather you are ahead or behind and by how much!
The unit is well worth the investment if you are pace minded. You can download all of your runs and see them on the computer in graph form or mapped out. Very cool! I purchased mine from a website for $179 and Costco currently has them for the same price so no need to pay full price.
