Alameda Runners – Get After It!

After careful deliberation, I bought the Timex Ironman GPS Trainer because a $50 rebate and 15% off coupon made it $100 cheaper than the Garmin.  I also thought it would be easier to use.  I should know better than to think, it only gets me into trouble.  It is not easy to use.  It was a brick strapped to my wrist.  I figured since I went to the trouble of buying the thing I should at least give it a fair try before I took it back.  Maybe the ladies will think I look sexy with a brick strapped to my wrist.

I spent about 3 hours reading the instructions and trying to get the thing to tell me what time it was.  I did not realize that satellite reception is hard to get in the San Francisco area.  My Garmin never had a problem.  I got the time to show the correct time and told the watch my age and weight.

I took it for a practice walk and the watch told me I was going for a swim.    I did get it to switch to run mode and there are a lot of options for configuring the watch face.  I could go from 1-4 items on the face and they are easily configurable without reading instructions.  I decided to give the brick a fair trial starting with a swim.

Off to the pool I went to put my swimming toy through the paces.  The watch failed miserably.  Actually, I was the miserable one.  I managed to get it into swim mode in less than 5 minutes which is a respectable time for something high tech and no instructions in hand.  Happy with my progress, I pushed start and jumped into the pool to start my swim.  I did not mention how the chest strap is hard to adjust and uncomfortable when tight.  I feel it is worth mentioning now because it went to my waist as soon as I kicked off the wall.

I put the strap on the wall and started swimming again.  I swam for about 4 minutes consciously aware of the brick on my arm.  It was uncomfortable and heavy.  I checked the distance and found I went more than 400 meters in 4 minutes, including the time I spent taking the strap off.  For you non-swimmers, that is world class speed.  The GPS did not consider arm rotations as part of swimming.  Since I really wanted the GPS to succeed in the water, I switched from brick mode to anchor mode and put the thing on my leg.  I only found it a bit odd that it fit my leg better than my arm.  Apparently the watch did not like being on my leg and it stopped doing its GPS thing and went to watch mode.

I did not cry when it failed the swim test because I did not really expect success.  I really did hope it had some cool math algorithms going so the distance would be close.  It showed a distance that was greater than twice the distance traveled.  I might have kept the watch if the GPS worked in the water.

Getting to the desired mode is aggravating.  Like most people, I wear the HRM GPS when running more than anything else.  The watch should default to run mode.  It defaults to triathlon mode.  In all fairness, it is not very hard to switch to run mode.  I don’t like the idea of changing modes every time I run.

After reading the instructions, the watch is really powerful and relatively easy to use.  The chest strap is very well constructed with very nice pickups.  It does have snaps which are terrible for us open water swimmers.  The dual adjustment strap is hard to get right.  The watch is big and fits small wrists very poorly.  It fit my leg pretty well but it is hard to read on my ankle.

The GPS watch is so big, heavy and inconvenient to use, I took it back before I got out for a run with it.  Sorry Timex, you have the makings of a great product here but size, weight, GPS performance and triathlon first setup sunk this one for me.  The buckle has a little too much metal that cuts into the arm because the strap has to be tight to keep it from bouncing and it seems like the watch is not designed to be worn.