I ordered this toy as something to help me run more at the same time I ordered my replacement Foreman grill. I’m always fascinated by excessive data and fancy gizmos, and keep trying to improve on my times. I’ve been slacking on running lately, so what better than a GPS and heart rate monitor built into one little unit to get me back at it?

I took it out for its inaugural run today, which was part of a 10km training program I downloaded from runnersworld.co.uk . I’m running a half marathon in 6 weeks, but there’s no 6 week half-M program there, although there is an 8 week 10km program, so I took that and lopped off the first two weeks. Today’s run was 5 miles, with the first and last being warmup/cooldown. I did it in 40 minutes, which I’m pretty happy with especially given the ridiculous winds that were blowing around town today. I’ll certainly be ready for the Colfax half in May. A month after that, I’ve got it set to start a 16 week program to prepare for the Denver Marathon. My targets? 1:30 for the half (though I’ll be stoked at 1:39:59) and 3:30 for the full. It looks like I probably won’t make it skiing this weekend (despite the ridiculous amounts of snow) thanks to my car being horribly banged up in the hit & run last week, so I’ll go for a longer run tomorrow most likely.

I got mine from Amazon and had it in about a week with free shipping. I’d strongly suggest a HR monitor for people trying getting serious about working out, and if you want to/can afford it, the GPS is a great addition for running.