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Tag: Garmin Forerunner 220

Runner’s Holiday Gift Ideas

December 23, 2014

Yes it is just two days before Christmas, but if you are like me you may be behind on your shopping this year and need some last-minute ideas for someone!  Well I have a few ideas for you that you can click a few clicks on your mouse and print out a page or two and you will be covered for this Christmas!  I love getting new running gear.  I especially love getting it as a gift!  Here are a few great ideas for your runner in your life  Some items that I’d love to receive for Christmas or possibly something you’d like to give to your runners are:

Entry into a runDisney race.  You can give a non-Disney Gift card, like a pre-paid Visa or Mastercard for any monetary value and the runner can use that when registering for their runDisney race of choice.  Then for the Expo you can give your runner a Disney Gift card to use for the official runDisney merchandise, food during the racecation or even towards the hotel room.  If you shop with your red card at Target you can save 5% on the purchase of your Disney Gift Card, too!

An Airline gift certificate.  I’d love to get some free Southwest credit to use towards my races!

Entry into a virtual race or an actual race.  I was planning on going to the Jeff Galloway’s Inaugural 13.1 race in Atlanta this year, but due to some circumstances at home, I had to put that race on hold this year.  However, I can participate in the virtual race and will still receive my medal!  Click here for more details.

Jeff Galloway also offers race retreats.  Why not take a little retreat somewhere to relax AND run and learn with Jeff and Barbara Galloway?!

raceshrugI recently purchased a great new piece of clothing to add to my gear.  A fly shrug.  It was perfect for the Wine and Dine half marathon (race recap coming soon!).  It was a rainy race and I wasn’t sure how the weather was going to be in regards to temperature.  So this was perfect in case I needed to take it off to cool off.  I also used it for the Philadelphia marathon and again it was a perfect addition on a cold morning in addition to my short sleeve shirt and arm sleeves.

Fleece lined running tights are awesome for the winter.  I love mine!  I was lucky enough to find some at Target and at Kohls for a rather inexpensive price.

iTunes gift cards are a perfect stocking stuffer to add music to the runner’s playlists or to download special running apps.  You can purchase the gift card online, print it out or even email it to your runner recipient.

If you have time to get to a store, find your runner the Garmin 220 is amazing. I love mine! It is everything I needed for my first Garmin watch. Now that I am doing some treadmill training I do need to invest in the show pod to help me keep track of mileage while running indoors.

fitbitFitbit.  I don’t have one (yet).  I am hoping I get one for Christmas!  I want the FitBit One because I don’t want to wear a wristband all the time to keep track of my steps and activity.  Target and Kohls has these items, most stores sell them, actually.  So get out there and get one for your runner!  They will love it.  Runners enjoy stats and monitoring their progress.  You can use this in addition to your Garmin to see your total activity for a day, PLUS you can see how well you sleep at night, too!

Runners Box.  Don’t you love getting free stuff in the mail?!  Well you can (sort of).  If someone purchases a runners box subscription for you, you will receive a new box in the mail every few weeks with different runner items to try out.  The prices range between $21 – $30 for a bi-monthly to yearly subscription.  You can purchase a one time gift box or a yearly subscription. What a great idea!  The gift that keeps on giving!  I will be mentioning this to my husband today in case he needs any last-minute ideas.  Thank you to the Mickey Miles Podcast for mentioning it in their holiday gift guide pod cast (episode 225).

#OmbrePolkaJN #VenusJN #RaspberrySparkleJNLast but not least, if your runner likes to wear costumes for their races, you can add an accessory to their costume with a Jamberry gift card.  You can give them a gift card so they can purchase custom Disney wraps to use with their costumes or even just to purchase the stock nail wraps that come in hundreds of different designs!  Check them out on my site at http://pamfrost.jamberrynails.net.  Or like my Facebook page to see the Disney designs. You can purchase a gift card and print it out immediately to stuff in the runner’s stocking.  Can’t go wrong with that!

Happy Holidays!

 

My Garmin Debacle

May 12, 2014

So I was running the Simsbury River Race a few weeks ago and prior to the race I was sitting in Kim’s car with her discussing my race strategy.  She asked me what my current running pace was.  I pulled out my phone and starting to look at my stats and she told me, “Girl, you need to get a Garmin!  It’s time to get away from all that phone crap.”  (Well maybe not word for word, but that’s what she was trying to say).  So I decided to use the birthday money my mom gave me towards a Garmin watch.

As soon as the race was over, I came home and pulled up the Garmin site and amazon.com and did some research.  There were two specific things that I had to consider when purchasing a watch, battery life and interval training.

Well, I should have done more research because the first watch I ordered, The Garmin Forerunner 210 could only do interval training in increments of 10 seconds.  It’s a nice watch, but I wasn’t really sure if it was going to suit my training needs.

forerunner210

So I ordered another Garmin, the Forerunner  310XT and when it arrive it was the size of a laptop on my arm!  I wasn’t too happy about the size of that watch, but it had a lot of features I was interested in like the lap pace and other data on the larger screen while doing the interval training.  So I figured worst case, I can wear it on my fitness belt and look at the data as I am running.

forerunner310

The other mistake I made was testing out the watch very little prior to my marathon. I had an epic fail on race morning because I charged the Garmin Forerunner 310, but didn’t put it in power save mode overnight.  So when Gail and I got to the lobby on race morning it was dead!  So we ran upstairs, she grabbed her watch, I grabbed my Forerunner 210 and we went back downstairs.  I used it during the race with the 20/20 intervals, but when we hit 99 reps of intervals it stopped and I didn’t know what to do!  I thought I lost all of my data.  Come to find out, the data is still in the watch, but I have no idea how to restart the intervals.  I did restart the timer but I assumed I was starting at mile 0 again and starting all new stats.  We used Gail’s watch at this point in the race, but I was trying to capture as much data as I could because I like to review the numbers after my races.

My most recent purchase is the Garmin Forerunner 220 and so far I love it so much that I wore it as my every day watch.

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It is simple to use, the battery life is great and I like the screen and information it provides me during my run.  I like that I can select intervals for my own specific times for run and rest, and I came across a walk/run timer built into it today.  I am still learning the watch, but it is very easy to use and some time on YouTube will really teach me a lot about it.

garminscreen

 

The watch is very light weight and is comfortable on my arm.  When I first started running with a watch I hated the feeling on my arm.  It really irritated me.  Ironically, when I was running the Providence marathon with it on, it didn’t even bother me.  I charged it when I received it last week and used it twice for running, and as a watch for time and it hasn’t required a charge yet.

The Garmin 220 is a keeper for sure.  I already returned the other two watches and have no regrets.  The Garmin Forerunner 210 is a nice watch, but when comparing the 210 to the 220 I’m all about the 220.  Easy to read screen, cute colors and very light weight.

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