Opinions on Garmin FR60 watch???

bump, anyone?

Forerunner 110 would be cheaper and probably do what you want more accurately... don't get me wrong, I love the FR60... but if all you want is basic pace and distance and timing, 110 is probably the way to go.

i have the basic fr60 (without gps) from a few years ago, with the food pod, and heart rate monitor and it works great. you can calibrate it at the track if you need to, but you'd need to do it for different shoes and then change the setting before you run because I definitely noticed a difference in claimed distance when i ran the same route in my adidas adios vs. my adidas trail shoes. the footstrike must be different in some way that slightly alters the distance measurement they come up with.

anyway, does it really matter how accurate it is? all that matters to me is that it is accurate to itself. and it is. for several weeks i ran the same trail run loop and the distance recorded was almost the same each day, certainly within the margin of error for taking slightly different line through turns.

thanks for the reply. Is there a way to save the calibration for different shoes and then quickly set it before I go for a run?

looking for a watch wrote:

thanks for the reply. Is there a way to save the calibration for different shoes and then quickly set it before I go for a run?

no. the footpod is a 3-dimensional accelerometer, not just a step-counter so as long as you have it "generally" calibrated to your leg length it can adapt to different shoes, strides shortening and lengthening, even jogging in place. you do not need to set anything while changing shoes.

also, disregard the previous poster who talked about the 110. you can't do splits with that watch and the "pace" that watch gives you is actually your average pace per mile, not your instantaneous pace. the FR60 is the best watch garmin makes, dollar for dollar. it will be money well-spent.

looking for a watch wrote:

Anyone know if it's an annoyance with having to switch the foot pod around depending on which shoes you decide to run with (for those that rotate between shoes like myself)?

How accurate would this watch be with doing intervals on the road? Will it allow me to pre-program a workout before a run. Say if I want to do different length intervals, will it give me a beep or something when I've reached the distance of each interval?

thanks.

I had one for 3 months so far and am very happy.

Q1. It takes seconds to clip/unclip it (although the pod's pretty small so I tend to leave it on shoes so I don't put it down somewhere and have a panic in the morning). I don't think this made any difference to accuracy.

Q2. Out of the box it was within 2% for me, and once I did the calibration routine (which is very easy) I then had it within 1% (agreeing with the track, and with courses off MapMyRun, and a treadmill). This is as good as it can get.

Overall, very useful for knowing how far you have run, and for making it possible to do sessions like 6x1000 in the course of a run through parkland. The interval mode is great. And it seems to gently encourage me to find new routes on runs rather than sticking to my regular "known distance routes".

However, once in a while it has acted up. When the snow came down I think it affected it - maybe iced up inside? - as it have me 3:30 mile pace on my morning runs! And during a rather muddy/slippery 5k XC race, it ended up 8% off, which was annoying as I was trying to use the 'pace per mile' screen as guidance. I suspect that you need to 'calibrate' for the shoes, running pace and surface you are aiming for.

stitch wrote:also, disregard the previous poster who talked about the 110. you can't do splits with that watch and the "pace" that watch gives you is actually your average pace per mile, not your instantaneous pace. the FR60 is the best watch garmin makes, dollar for dollar. it will be money well-spent.

Not sure where you got your info, but the 110 most certainly does lap splits. It stores up to 1000 splits. And it gives an average pace for the lap (not per mile, unless you are using autolap to take a split every mile)... which frankly is more useful than instantaneous pace. If you want to know if you are on your pace for a tempo, isn't it more useful to know your pace for the whole split, and not just the second you look at the watch? What if you glance at your watch while going into the wind, or up a hill and your pace is off?

Clearly the OP can get whatever watch he/she wants, and I think they are both great options... but lets at least give out accurate information.

Also, @OP, neither watch can do basic or advanced workouts... to get that feature you need to go with the 410 which starts to become quite a bit pricey.

quack wrote:

Also, @OP, neither watch can do basic or advanced workouts... to get that feature you need to go with the 410 which starts to become quite a bit pricey.

The 410 is out of my budget and more watch than I was looking for. I think I could probably just get creative with using the lap settings to figure out how to do something like ladder intervals. Maybe set it to make a lap 200m or 400m or something like that.