Sub 1:30 Half Marathon in 2020 (Read 618 times)

 

DWave - interested to hear how you go with the new watch.  My Fenix 5S's wrist HRM mysteriously snapped back to life a day after it mysteriously died and its been fine ever since.  But those faulty barometric altimeter readings are annoying at times, I've had the same issue.  If I was buying something new I'd likely go for the 645 as I don't use half the stuff on my 5S and it's more running-specific - with the variety in your training I can see why the 735 would be a good pick.

Yup - I'm really dependent on the swimming phase since I both pool-run and swim.  I actually think I am more dependent on the watch in the water than I am on land.  I can go for a run and be able to figure out how far I've run without a watch, but in the pool having a device on my wrist that automatically counts laps is magical (I have my watch set to buzz every 200 yards, in case I lose count)  And Garmins have a "drill" function in their swimming, so that I can do kick sets, etc, without it throwing everything off.

A lot of the really fancy stuff I don't care about and never use.  I don't care about music on my watch, I don't want to use my watch to pay for stuff, and I don't hike, mountaineer, ski, snowboard or any of that stuff. If I was a serious ultra runner I might care more about accurate elevation, but I'm not.  As for stuff like training stress, race estimator, etc, I've always found that unhelpful, so I don't care if I don't have it anymore.

Bonus - this is the smallest watch I've had yet, and the first one that I haven't had to buckle on either the very top hole or the second to top hole of the strap.  I didn't realize how nice that would feel until I experienced it.

I uploaded mine fine manually. I guess I'm just amazing with computers Oleg 

I think you save the FIT file to your pc first then import that to strava

You can also manually upload to Garmin as a file.  You then keep Garmin and Strava in synch.

I have an old FR15.  GPS can be slow getting initial signal, and I would like heart rate.

It did "die" last year.  I just bought a replacement battery off Ali online, and swapped out the battery, and it worked fine.

Watson good to see the old workhouse fr15 still going strong. I have the 235 which is excellent. The battery is the only issue apparently but if you recharge daily no problem. I like the blue tooth connectivity to my phone. The Heart rate monitor was a new thing to me but it has given me a new data point to obsess over 

 

I doubled up today with a 14km run with 7kms at tempo in my new Fuelcell Rebels and a 8km recovery run this afternoon.

I always found the FR235 battery life to be fine.  Normally I'd need to charge it a couple of times a week, I was averaging maybe 70km/week then.  That is one of the massive downsides to the Apple Watch IMO - you need to charge it daily.  I can deal with charging a phone daily, but a watch?!

I also just discovered I can buy a Fenix 6 with Airpoints.  That's pretty tempting considering I'm in no danger of buying flights anytime soon!

Watson - the HRM is definitely useful.  Most of the new wrist-HRM's are pretty good now too, consistently within 1-3bpm of chest-strap HR which is the gold standard.  I still find it helpful for making sure I'm getting hard efforts in the right zone and not overdoing easy/recovery runs.

I'm the king of cheapskates although you wouldn't think so with my recent shoe purchases .

I will just load my runs manually with the FIT  files daily even though it will all go through once its sorted. Who knows how long that will be.

Mark I've not had an issue with the 235 either. I do chuck it on charge after each run out of habit. I heard the optical heartrate monitor chews through the battery.

I had the 235 and charged it maybe once a week.

Now I have the 645 and it's once every 8 or 9 days I reckon (but I'm running lower mileage these days).

The 645 is perfect for me. For my wife though it can't read her heart rate properly. Possible reasons are it fits writs 127mm and up and hers are smaller. Also she has low blood pressure.

I think heart rate is VERY accurate for current effort (Except those few times when the heart rate reader goes crazy).

I have disabled auto lap a while ago so I rarely glance down at the watch, but I usually just keep the heart rate number showing there.

IN OTHER NEWS:

After an excruciatingly 6 month long wait, today I have finally been recognized an Italian citizen. I'm going by the city hall tomorrow to receive my Italian birth certificate which makes it official. I've been dreaming about this day for 15 years.

I was born on a tiny town of 3000 people back in Brazil where 90% of the people spoke Italian and I still carry an Italian accent when speaking Portuguese to this day (which is funny because I probably carry a Portuguese accent when speaking Italian).

I'm very thankful to Mamma Italia for recognizing her son even after 150 years that my great grandfather emigrated to Brazil.

A few more days and I'll have the shiny Italian ID card and passport which will grant me visa free access to about 20 extra countries.

I'm beyond happy and relieved 

Flavio - congratulations!

(why do we no longer have the dancing banana emoticon?)