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Knowledge Is Key
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Garmin Forerunner 201
The Garmin Forerunner 201 is a top-quality tool for runners and an exceptional value for their money. Runners at all levels will find this GPS unit to be extremely useful, providing them with a way of monitoring their pace and tracking their mileage. It's hard to beat all the many features included in the Forerunner 201.
Whether you're a serious athlete or a weekend jogger, the Garmin Forerunner 201 will be your real mate on your training. This lightweight GPS device comes with an ambitious roster of features for monitoring your pace and tracking mileage.
At 3.3 by 1.7 by 0.7 inches, the Garmin Forerunner 201 looks chunkier than your average sports watch but weighs a mere 2.8 ounces. Using an expandable Velcro band, you can strap the 201 on your wrist or around your arm. The 201's 1.4-by-0.9-inch, 100x64 monochrome LCD is very readable in bright light and at night with its backlight. Its plastic-alloy case is waterproof up to 1 meter, so you can take it out on the slopes or for a run through puddles without worry.
The Forerunner does everything your pedometer can and more. Advanced runners will find plenty of good stuff in the Training Assistant under the Menu mode. You can set it up to beep if you go below a certain pace, automatically pause the timer if you trail a given speed, program training intervals, and deliver time and distance alerts.
Garmin Forerunner 201's ability to store a detailed performance history is very useful. You automatically get summaries of your last run and a week's worth of info on mileage, calories burned, and total time spent running. You can also upload your run data to your PC and chart it using the included PC-only Logbook software. Oddly enough, the 201 connects via an old-fashioned serial port for downloading data instead of the faster and ubiquitous USB. And while the software is a nice addition, it's not very sophisticated.
There are even more advanced features. The Virtual Partner - a feature that allows you to program in a distance and pace (or distance and time, or time and pace) for your Virtual Partner. After you have programed in the distance and pace variables, you select "done" and you are asked to push the start button to proceed. If you have previously started your Forerunner, say you've done a warm up, the results from this warm up are filed and the Forerunner starts with a new file.
The Pace Alert where you can set the Forerunner to beep when you go faster or slower than a pace you determine. The slow pace alert is not all that useful. If you set this feature you will find it beeps a lot: not only when you are going slow, but also when The Forerunner thinks you are going slow...like when the Forerunner has an obstructed view of the sky. The fast pace alert seems like it suffers less from the inevitable fluctuations in pace calculations.
The Interval Training - this feature is really handy but could be improved some to make it more flexible. Perhaps Garmin will improve it in some future firmware update. The primary disadvantage is that you can only set the interval distance or time, the rest distance or time, and the number of intervals. So if you want to run some 400's followed by some 800's and maybe some 200's, forget about using the Interval Training. Obviously you can always monitor your Forerunner yourself instead of waiting for it to beep at you. Still, even though the interval training feature is not all that flexible, it works quite well for straight forward intervals.
Serious and competitive runners will probably be frustrated with the Forerunner 201's imprecise GPS location tracking, but for more casual use, it's close enough to be helpful. Garmin also offers a cheaper, pared-down version of the Forerunner, the Forerunner 101, which lacks the 201's PC interface, runs on two AAA batteries, and is a bit bigger.
The Forerunner 201 is a great tool. It helps you monitor your pace and allows you to run intervals and repeats even if you don't have access to a track. It suffers from accuracy problems when running on wooded trails or roads, but even so accuracy appears to be with 5%. The Forerunner's software is good and easy to use even without reading the manual.
Bottom line - this is a very good device for runners.
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