I use the Garmin Forerunner 201 to assist in my training. I is a wonderful tool to tell me how far a given run was, especially when I don’t know the course. It is fairly light and I hardly notice it when I am running. The satellite reception is spotty in trees, and I assume it would be in the city also.
The pace feature is all but useless. I tried changing the interval that it measured the pace every which way and learned to just ignore it. It does measure time (I should hope so… =) ) and distance quite well. If I hit lap every mile I know what my pace was for that mile. That requires a bit of attention to the watch… more than I would like to give at times. I think the 301 has an auto-lap feature which will pace on mile / kilometer of whatever. That would have been a very very handy feature for me. If I upgrade in the future… that alone will be the driving reason. The 301 was quite a bit more expensive though. In think I picked up the 201 for $89, while the 301 is twice that!
I really haven’t messed with any of the other features the watch has yet. I may never. Most of them are just not applicable to what I am interested in right now. I currently don’t do any heart rate monitoring, which I think the 301 offers as well.
Bottom line, the Garmin Forerunning 201 is a great tool to tell you how much ground you have covered. It works best on straight courses, with a clear view of the sky. It seems to have more of a problem on trail running because I think the basically draws a straighter line than you may be running, and of course, the reception is worse on trails. It is wonderful to take on a vacation and just head out and run… then you can turn around when you have covered half the distance you want.
I am happy with the purchase, especially since the price was rather cheep, but I sure wish it could accurately tell me my pace.
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