i2runner

Garmin Forerunner 405 – for runners

Not geeky looking as the GF305 – but has all its brains and more technology.
To celebrate my 1 year of consistent running anniversary (and my Christmas gift for myself), I bought the latest, most advanced, and most useful running gadget for runners, the Garmin Forerunner 405. I got it from my good friend “runnermhel” of takbo.ph.
I was so disappointed with my old Nike+ Sportband – you always have to calibrate it and it’s never accurate during races, and it’s not water resistant as the manual claims. It doesn’t even have any backlight. This time, the GF405 have all of these and a lot more.

I’m a proud owner of GF405.

It’s actually an upgraded version of the old GF305. The upgrades are: touch sensitive bezel, wireless data transfer (via blue tooth), new garmin-connect website, and feather light – it’s really for runners. Ok, the upgrades aren’t really that significant as far as running is concerned, the GF305 is already a great product. I only bought the GF405 because the 305 really looks geeky, bulky and heavy. You can’t wear the 305 to your office and show it to your friends (I always amaze my friends with the 405). Also, you’ll likely to get robbed of GF305 if you run at dangerous places, it looks like an expensive machine while the GF405 looks like a cheap sportswatch. The bezel is used primarily for menu navigation, and there are only 2 buttons – mostly used for start/stop and lap. I think Garmin wants this watch to look sleeky so they designed the bezel to be touch sensitive and remove most of the buttons found in GF305. Great idea, like in ipods, but some runners report that the bezel’s too sensitive for them. Most of them complain their long sleeves often touch the bezel when running. This doesn’t seem to be an issue in tropical climates. I’ve also used this running in heavy rain, no problem for me.
It’s a little bigger than my dad’s Nike C8 HRM watch, but it’s actually ligther… a lot lighter.

GPS
To begin, the GPS must be turned ON. When the GPS is ON, the battery should last for 8hours. Bad news for ultramarathoners. If it’s always OFF, it can last up to 2weeks. I have used it for 4 days without charging with an hour each day of running, and it still had 20% battery left. People ask me, don’t you need any subscription to use GPS? The answer is no. GF405 is a GPS receiver. It receives signals from satellites. Each signal has information of the time sent and the exact position of the satellite transmitter. With this, the GF405 calculates the distance of each satellite (d=s.t), and with the satellite position information, it then calculate its own position through trilateration.

If you go to “Satellites”, you’ll see it searching for satellites. The white bars represent the satellites it senses – the height represents the intensity of the signal and the number below is the ID of the satellite. When its color turns black, it means the watch has locked its GPS unto that satellite. If you look closely, there are a maximum of possible 12 satellites. According to Garmin, a GPS device could only see up to 12 satellites at once (there are 24 total GPS satellites orbiting the earth). The more satellites it could see, the more accurate the positioning is. Garmin says the average for GF405 is 15 feet of accuracy – to visualize, it’s the distance of free throw in basketball. Mine seems to average around 20 feet only (It has sometimes reached the accuracy of 5 feet). Well if a GPS enabled missile was locked unto a target, 20feet of error is still deadly. For distance running, what matters most is the displacement, not necessarily the position. If the position is only accurate at 20feet, a 5K race displacement would be 0.12% accurate. Go figure.
For navigation, it can also save your current latitude and longitude so you could go back to your location if you’re lost. It shows the direction and the distance to your desired location. You can also edit it, and enter a different latitude and longitude. Cool.

FOR RUNNERS The GF405 seems to sample your exact position every 5 seconds – and then reports your distance traveled, real time pace – good for racing, ave pace, elapsed time, laps, elevation, grade, and even the sunrise and sunset. All the data a serious runner wants. Oh, it even has a virtual partner feature that you can simulate, but I find this making my training harder. I never want to race my workouts. I think the most useful and best feature is the interval, which can alert you if you have traveled a certain distance, say 400m, so you could have your recovery, for instance, 200m. I bought the package without the HRM strap, but it has an option to buy it, and it can graph in real time on your watch your heart rate.

UPLOAD
After my workout, I find my watch transferring data immediately after I got inside my room. How? Via bluetooth. No more hassles for wires, especially if you have a lot of these already. It’s quite fast, about less than a minute, and I could view all the details of my run in the free garmin training center.

Bells and whistles
Probably the most attractive feature of Forerunner series is the ability to upload your runs it to connect.garmin.com (or motionbased.com for GF305 and older) and view with satellite pictures with the help of google earth. You can also press the “play” button and see an icon run your path. Wow! Here’s a sample of my 12mile run today. Go to player, click the satellite button, and click the “play” button.

Time piece
Did I mention this is a watch? It is. It’s probably the most accurate/correct wrist watch in the world. Why? Every time it locks to satellites, it synchronizes its time with their time. Every time the GPS is turned on, the time is synchronized and updated. Imagine, 12 satellites with atomic clocks in each of them. It gets the average of 12 atomic clocks’ time. Of course there are some deviation in time due to the relative speed of each satellite with respect to the GPS receiver, it’s actually a bit slower (please refer to Einstein’s theory of special relativity). But I believe Garmin’s figured that already and have included complex mathematical algorithms to calibrate the relative time difference. You can’t be anymore accurate than that. It’s a watch you can be proud of wearing.

Room for improvement
The connect.garmin.com website is still boring compared with the more detailed motionbased.com website for the older GF305. They are still working on integrating both websites. The GF405 seems to have copied the scrolling touch sensitive bezel from ipod. Maybe Garmin’s going to copy the touch sensitive screen of itouch as well? It uploads the data via bluetooth, so why not use 3G or HSDPA right after running while still on the road? And while at it, maybe you could surf the net while at HSDPA mode. Another limitation of this device is its earthbound navigation only. You can’t use it when running on the moon. Ok my suggestions are now far out, because there’s practically nothing more a runner could ask for in a Garmin Forerunner series.

Conclusion
If you already have a GF305, it’s not a big step to upgrade to GF405. If you’re still thinking of buying a Forerunner, I would recommend the GF405. Garmin Forerunners are still expensive but if you’re serious about running and thinking doing it for years as part of your life, the GF405 is a good investment.