Garmins in Race's.....

Interesting - I never considered that they may be against the rules.  If wonder if anyone has had to hand back a prize because they wore a GPS?

I always wear mine and use the average pace function to make sure I run at a consistant pace.  I'm always inclined to go off too fast with the adrenaline and at least the garmin makes sure I slow down early rather than waiting for the first mile marker.

tbh wouldn't expect the garmin to 100% accurate, you only have to look at one of your training routes in Google Earth to see how you are measured on a kind of point to point basis rather than what you actually run. Either that or I am not noticing myself running through peoples gardens on my routes!

Good point CL, mile markers can often be a bit out, often caused I dare say my a lack of a lampost or similar to put the marker.

I'll be using mine at FLM this year and expect the odd mile to be out hear and there but will at least help me keep a track of my minutes per miling without remembering to hit the lap button each time.

It only measures on a point to point basis if you set it that way, mine's set to record by the second, making it really accurate.  My 15 mile training run yesterday was only 0.03 miles out.

I'll be wearing mine in the Wokingham half anyway on Sunday, I'm certainly in no danger of winning any prizes so it doesn't really make any difference to me. 

Not quite sure I understand that (how does it record distance by seconds?) but will check out the settings in the instruction manual again.

Have had various results in accuracy. Did a 16 miler yesterday, ran 8 miles, turned around and came back, finished in same spot but only recorded 15.91 miles. However, at the Dartford 10 clocked 10.01 miles.

And likewise for the Wokingham Half, i'll be taking part but there would have to be a serious amount of people taking a wrong turn for me to get near the podium!

The Garmin has smart recording set by default, where from what I recall it records data based on every change in speed and direction, but you can set it to record so that every second of information is stored, making it more accurate.  It only holds 3.5 hours of info that way though.

Probably makes even less sense now, the manual will explain it better though. 

No, that does make much more sense! Will have to look at that, presume you have to make sure you download each run before the next to be on the safe side.

Note to self; read manuals more throughly!

I use a 305 in training and run to it in training as it helps me push on mostly (the day it tells me to slow down will be the day Lucifer needs ice skates to get to the day job). Not that interested in splits in training afterwards though.

In races, I wear it but never look at it. I did look at it in one race and got so fixated by it, I simply got slower and slower. I find the race data afterwards invaluable imo. You can see how well your pacing is working out and use the data to adjust your training in the future. I'll wear it at London this year but will only glance at the current pace from time to time to make sure I'm not going too fast too early on