Fortunately for me I am spoilt, and my good lady wife didn’t listen to my moans for long before coming home with a beautiful orange gift – the Garmin Forerunner 310XT.

The Forerunner 310XT has been the long awaited upgrade to the Forerunner 305. The Forerunner 405 (reviewed here) let us down with it’s silly bevel features that went haywire at the first hint of moisture, so the Forerunner 310XT marks a back to basics approach, stick with the tried, tested and much loved functionality of the 305 but add the long called for water resistance that should mark this as the triathletes choice.

Not of course that I can call myself a triathlete having done only one sprint event about 3 whole years ago. I am occasionally known to dabble in open water swimming though, or at least I have done twice, but I don’t think one should limit oneself, who knows when I may decide to pull on the wetsuit and explore the local waterways.

So the biggest change between the Forerunner 305 and the Forerunner 310XT is that Garmin have made the 310XT waterproof and therefore suitable for the swim. Having looked into the watches swim capabilities though I think I understand why Garmin took their time to introduce the feature and make a truly triathlon oriented GPS watch.

This review of the Garmin Forerunner 310XT is continued on warriorwomen running blog.

Here’s what actually happened:

I presume my current fitness level is the rate limiter and not my bike choice, so I may as well stick to the Brompton, with its handy frame mounted bag and potential for shoving on the train when I can’t be bothered to go any further.

The activity comparison movie was taken from Ascent the activity tracker or sports log for mac. Since I’ve started using GPS again I’ve been really impressed with this software, I’m even beginning to get over the loss of Sporttracks when I moved away from the PC.

The activity comparison window is one of the best I’ve ever seen on a sports log.

Originally published on my warriorwomen blog.

I was sent an iPhone sports band around the same time as I found myself kitted out with the Adidas miCoach which proved to be perfect timing. The miCoach pacer needs to be held within about 2 inches of your mp3 player and it clips perfectly to the sports band.

iPhone accessories vary widely in their quality but I was really pleased this item. The strap was big enough to fit even my substantial arm (not pictured), the iPod touch screen worked beneath the plastic screen protector and the strap includes a perfect cable tidy to stop the headphone wrapping itself around my elbow. It’s very good quality and I’ve been out in the April showers and so far no harm has befallen my beloved phone.

I do have some concerns about the new iPhone carrier though, the other evening while running past the local “Enterprise” college, the strap came loose and I was left gasping and clutching at my heart. I was readying myself to scream pathetically until I realised there had been a temporary velcro failure and I wasn’t being mugged by a gang of iPhone coveters. It’s a serious concern though, I read in the paper last week that a local guy was killed for his Blackberry, which makes me think it’s probably not the best neighbourhood for running around with £400 of swanky gadgetry strapped provocatively to your arm.

I suppose I could wear baggier t-shirts to cover it up or go back to the bumbag style.

Yesterday I headed to the incredibly soggy climes of Mitcham Common for my run and had to move the foot pod to my sturdy Salomon GTX trainers, using the lace clip. This time the pacer recorded a much lower distance than the Nike+ but at least the pace chart proved to be realistic.

As both Adidas and the Garmin FR60 use ANT technology I was able to pair the miCoach pacer with the Garmin foot pod, which is great news as at least I know this one works and it means I can get the best of both worlds – instant visual feedback of pace, distance and time from my wrist watch and the vocal instruction and motivation from the miCoach pacer. The heart rate monitors are interchangeable as well as they also use ANT.

Today I took the Adidas miCoach and Garmin FR60 combination out on a familiar old haunt around the Chiswick and Barnes Bridge loop of the Thames. I wish I’d stuck with the off-roading trainers – my shiny white Adidas shoes haven’t been enhanced by their trip through the Thames.

I’m fairly sure this is a 3.5 km loop give or take a few metres, according to many GPS recordings taken over the years and both gadgets came close enough to keep me happy without the need to calibrate.

Now I’m happy with the accuracy and the set-up, I can just concentrate on picking up for my fitness for the Great North Run.

Originally published on my warriorwomen blog.

The miCoach pacer has given my running a whole new lease of life, I’ve been out 5 times this week and I’ve even canceled my gym membership as I seem happy enough to run outside now that I have some audible support. If I keep up this level of enthusiasm for two months it would have paid for itself already.

So my feelings are strong for this new gadget but I can’t help feeling a little disgruntled with its accuracy. Hence the head to head foot pod test, pitting the Nike+ Footpod against the Garmin Forerunner FR60 and the Adidas miCoach Pacer.

Here’s the Adidas miCoach output, which is very pleasing to the eye. This particular chart is showing my heart rate against time with the scheduled HR zones overlaid. I was supposed to stay in blue zone for the first and last 5 minutes with a 30 minute stint in green zone. Blue is such a hard zone to stick to, it’s a tiny bit too high for walking but too low for running so I end up running for a minute then walking – hence the zig zags. Green is a lot more comfortable.

The middle dip in the chart occurs because the pacer declared it had temporarily lost contact with the footpod. Although she encouraged me to carry on while she re-scanned I decided to dither on the spot, I was in the middle of a controlled experiment afterall.

The final results from Adidas suggest I completed 5.38 km in 42 mins which is extraordinarily unlikely given that it included 10 mins walking time. The pace image at the top of the chart says 05:36 min/km which must also be tosh. I never run at that pace and it also doesn’t equate to 5.38 km over 42 mins. So something wrong here. Still, I don’t know why I’m complaining, the doobury wotsit tells me to slow down with every step and then declares that I’ve set a blistering pb pace – result!

The Nike+ Sportand is a no-nonsense beast. It consistently performs, it’s cheap and I can’t help thinking its pretty accurate as well. Shame the stats are so painfully naff. How awful is that chart? The axes aren’t labeled, its been smoothed beyond recognition and its ugly.

The Nike+ recorded a distance of 4.76 km over the 42 min run.

Here’s the pace output from the Garminn Forerunner FR60. You would normally also have heart rate info overlaid but I thought it would be a bit overkill to have two heart rate straps on.

The Garmin footpod recorded the shortest distance of the bunch at 4.41 km.

So there was a huge variation in distance recorded:

Garmin FR60 – 4.41 km
Nike+ Sportband – 4.76 km
Adidas miCoach – 5.38 km

Without testing this on a defined route I can’t be sure which is the most accurate but my suspicions based on the fact that I am at my heaviest in ages and also my unfittest is that it won’t be the miCoach. I did map my route on google maps and it came out at 5.22 km which I also don’t believe.

If I needed any more evidence that the miCoach pacer was a little unreliable, here’s the pacer chart from the same run. It looks like a bar code and bears no resemblance to how the run felt to me. It should be directly comparable to the Garmin offering above but obviously isn’t. Perhaps its just teething problems or perhaps I have a dodgy footpod. The miCoach offering is still in its early days and I would expect their to be software enhancements that may improve this sort of output, perhaps it requires a tiny bit more smoothing?

There’s nothing else left to do so I’ve gone and signed myself up for a 5 km race in Regents Park. I’ll take all 3 gadgets out on another outing and calibrate them properly.

Originally published on my warriorwomen blog.

The assessment requires you to start walking and then gradually work your way up the effort scale from 4 to 9. 9 being just shy of a myocardial infarction. With this hill I have to pop glyceryl trinitrate under my tongue within about 10 secs and my heart rate profile shows the undesired angina spike.

So the assessment was unsuccessful in amending my heart rate zones and I had to stick with the default settings for Day 1 of the “Be Fit” plan.

This was an interval session, requiring me to move through Blue, Green and Yellow zones. As you can see from the workout chart I really struggled to hit the easy effort blue zone. The hill broke me to start with but even on the flat I found I had to walk quite slowly to get my heart rate low enough to keep the posh lady happy.

Yesterday I went to the gym to work through a second assessment workout under the controlled conditions of the treadmill. That resulted in a successful output and my zones have now been amended to something more useful. Blue zone has been increased by about 10 bpm and hopefully that will enable me to actually run in my next workout – we’ll see tomorrow.

Both Garmin and Adidas claim that the foot pod sensor is somewhere close to 97 – 98% accurate out of the box.

I’m wearing the miCoach pod within a specially designed cavity in the Adidas Ride shoe which should ensure it is optimally placed for accuracy, but something is going wrong somewhere. The treadmill recorded a distance of 1.2km versus the miCoach pacer recorded distance of 1.6km. That is a huge discrepancy but as yet I don’t know if the treadmill is dodgy or the miCoach sensor.

I have 3 other foot pod running gadgets available (Garmin Forerunner FR60 and Nike+ Sportband) so tomorrow I put them head to head in a distance comparison. Of course that won’t enable to see which is the most accurate unless I run them on a reliably known distance (like one of those grotty running tracks) but it will give me an idea of the variation. Perhaps then I can schedule in a long overdue visit to the Wimbledon Park Run to calibrate it against the 5km route.

Originally published on my warriorwomen blog.

Back to miCoach though, I heard of it a while ago in connection with a Samsung mobile phone but they’ve now branched out and produced a very capable standalone system. In brief its a coaching system based on heart rate zones. They appear to have two systems on offer, the miCoach zone at £70 and the miCoach pacer at £120. The zone offering consists of a heart rate monitor and a bracelet that displays the coloured zone you are in, I haven’t tried this out but it seems pretty pointless to me. The miCoach pacer on the other hand is very interesting. It consists of a foot pod, heart rate monitor and a little electronic “thingy” for want of a better word. The thingy or pacer stores your workout details, both scheduled and completed and relays a series of instructions via the included headphones.

It’s the verbal instructions that set the adidas system apart from its competitors (ie. Garmin and Nike+). While Garmin and Nike offer systems that record workout details, Adidas have opted to focus on the training plan. The miCoach is aimed at the recreational runner who isn’t fortunate enough to have a personal running coach.

The Adidas website is very accomplished and offers a wide range of training plans, such as preparing to race, improving race time, losing weight etc. I’m quite a way off my next planned event – the Great North Run in Sept so I’ve set myself off on the “Be Fit” plan and will progress to the half marathon schedule in early summer.

The idea of the pacer is that it syncs with your online training plan and stores your scheduled workouts in its memory ready to relay to you on your run. The instructions are based around four coloured heart rate zones:

Blue – Easy Effort
Green – Medium Effort
Yellow – Hard Effort
Red – Maximal Effort

So a typical session might see the pacer instructing you to run in Blue zone for 2 mins before increasing to green zone for the duration and then ending in a cool down back in blue.

I have a very well spoken English lady talking to me and I think she has the level of interruption to my general thought process sorted. She gives me my instruction clearly then only butts back in to tell me that I’ve hit the relevant zone and need to maintain or to encourage me to either up or decrease the pace as appropriate. If I need more feedback I can press the central button on the pacer and she will inform me of pace, heart rate, distance etc.

The actual presentation event from Adidas was fairly disastrous. There were probably 15 people trying out the kit and almost all of us had a problem with the sensors failing to pick up. Seriously embarrassing for a product launch but I was decidedly grateful. I did one lap of the dreaded track and then got to quit as the gadget wasn’t working – result!

I had another go the next evening but the sensors still wouldn’t pick up. I have a feeling that the assorted parts got muddled up during setup and paired with the wrong pacers for the presentation day because it worked absolutely fine after I re-paired the sensors and pacer.

Part of the set up process required me to enter personal details such as height and weight. The weighing scales have been out of action for about a month so I haven’t been keeping an eye on myself. Hunting out new batteries revealed the full horror of a month long slide – 6 whole lbs of bad news.

The shock was so great that despite me being two cans of Stella down and it being just past bed time, I strapped the new gadget on and went out for the 12 minute assessment run round the mean streets of SW London.

Originally published on my warriorwomen blog.

While Lynn snuck out of bed to source cups of tea and toast, I churned out image after image of Gripple circuitry. I’d woken with a plan in my head and as an ever ready kind of a Scout, I just happen to keep a pad of grid paper by the bed for this sort of occurrence.

Having failed to find wire tensioners in Homebase last week I was pleased when my internet search uncovered a swanky new gadget for creating trellis constructions. It’s called the Gripple and I promptly ordered myself the starter pack of 4 Gripples, 4 Eye Hooks and a 30m reel of plastic wire.

This is where my puzzling started. Using only the above items, how do I (read: how does Lynn) create a fanned peach supporting wire combo with 4 lengths? We went for the 3rd aesthetically pleasing option and headed down to the plot.

I should perhaps have mentioned that we had chosen the weekend of the Severe Adverse Weather Warnings to partake in the peach transplantation event. It was a struggle removing the tree from the old plot with the famed light soil, a layer of ice had to be cracked away before the fork would gain entry and we ought to have thought about the difficulty of digging in our frozen heavy London clay plot.
But we didn’t.

I was keen to play with the new toys but my hands were freezing and I had to run up and down the plot doing high knee raises and clapping my hands before I could contend with the fiddly bits.

The design of the “tensulator” was very smart and when it work I was very impressed. When it didn’t work, I let myself down rather a lot and had one of those, throw yourself on the floor wailing, kinds of a strop. A bit embarassing.

Here I am, pre-wailing, trying to force the wire to go through the Gripple and out the other end so that I could loop it back. No amount of forcing was going to tease the wire through and the thing is designed not to let me pull the wire back out again and it wouldn’t.

Cue strop.

We had to cut it off in the end and Lynn took it away to the shed to perform some kind of surgery on it (or perhaps she thought if she left me alone I’d stop flouncing).

We managed to get this one on successfully in the end but another Gripple got stuck after looping it around and without wasting loads of wire we couldn’t cut this one off. It was in a locked position but couldn’t be tensioned and so the finished job looked a bit naff but worked in a fashion.

I don’t know why we had trouble with two of the Gripples, if I’d had a pack of spares I wouldn’t have got myself too worried but I needed all 4.

The working ones were very neat and it proved easy to build up the tension. Our posts now look decidedly wonky as the incremental tensioning pulled them into an apex.

I would like to have a handful of these in the shed for odd jobs but I’ll still remain concerned about their reliability.

My Dad left me his half tonne mattock after his last visit and a few swings of that saw my back in traction but also cracked the clay.

A robin swooped in to feast on some of the worms I’d just uncovered and reminded me how lovely it is to spend time down on the plot. With the feathering of snow also comes a peaceful calm that I rarely notice anywhere else. It’s a beautiful site.

The recent wet weather has made a huge difference to the clay, it’s incredibly heavy but you can at least force your tools through the surface. We got the peach in and it looked relatively cosy against its snowy backdrop.

Back at home we got to play with the connectable outdoor Christmas lights that Dobbies sent me to try out. We’ve never had outdoor lights before and the new acquisition left me rather popular.

My first attempt at laying them out was snubbed by all though.

I’d trailed them through the letterbox, creating quite a draft and a trip hazard combined, and the lights ran out before they reached the tree base but in my defense it was cold out there and I thought the twinkling effect set the recycling bin off very nicely.

We headed back to Homebase to research outdoor electric options and came back with an enclosed extension lead that we could position at the base of the tree and feed through a specially drilled hole in the window frame.

Our neighbours have kindly planted a leylandii which forms the perfect support for our lights. The kids were able to scrabble up and position the cabling while we stayed at the bottom prepared to catch them.

These Christmas Tree lights were very good quality piece of kit, the cabling is very solid and formed of 3 twined cables with generously spaced bulbs. There is a waterproof connector so that you can join multiple sets without leaving gaps in the lighting. We are quite tempted to go nuts and light up the whole house.

I thought I’d share my recommendations for what to fill your new iPhones and iPod touch machines with, starting with my take on the top 5 iPhone game applications available from the iTunes store.

My games screen tends to change fairly regularly as I drop the duff purchases and curse the reviews that led me to part with my hard earned pennies.

The 5 top games I’ve selected today have lingered for quite some months, and be warned, they have wasted a good chunk of my life in that period.

Here’s a shot of my current games screen.

Mahjong Solitaire

This is the most played game on my iPhone. I’ve tried out quite a few mahjong apps but so many of them are truly shocking. It must be a difficult challenge to get so many detailed little tiles on the screen but I’ve found this version to have the clearest representation without the fuss of changing inclination or rotation. You can zoom in of course but the standard display works very well.

There is a free Mahjong Solitaire Lite version so try that out first and move up to the fully fledged app when you feel the need for more layouts.

My only gripe with application is that it is timed (see the green bar) and I prefer to play mahjong when I need to chill out and relax. A freestyling option would be a good enhancement I think.

Bejewelled 2

Bejewelled is an all time favourite of mine from my days in the lab. I would spend hours on my laptop matching the coloured jewels while my experiments performed their own little miracles in the background.

This iPhone app is superb, a very faithful representation.

I’ve found myself standing out in the street at night, huddled under a street lamp trying to beat a previous high score as I come home from work. This is high stakes, high stress stuff and extremely addictive – handle with care.

Fieldrunners

The idea with this game is to lay out your weapons or towers in the right places to destroy the ant like invaders who try to get from one side of the screen to the other.

It’s a very simple concept but amazingly engaging. The sound effects help a lot as bombs explode, helicopters whir and soldiers croak it so I recommend playing this with your headphones on. Beware not to miss your tube stop though.

Airport Mania

I must have spent hours playing this game when I first installed it and now feel fully prepared for a role as Flight Traffic Controller at Heathrow.

The general idea is to land the planes, unload your passengers and get the plane back in the skies as soon as possible. At times you may have to refuel and send the planes to the workshop, all while dealing with multiple runways, inclement weather conditions and too many planes. They have a tendency to get agitated if you make them wait too long at any stage.

The levels get pretty intense and here I’ve started to let things get a little out of control with planes backing and sitting needlessly idle.

For a while I heard a lot of hype about Flight Control but it is just not as accomplished as Airport Mania, don’t let the child friendly graphics fool you, this is a very adept game.

Galcon Labs

I’m at a loss how to explain this arcade game.

You are basically directing your ships to colonise other planets, produce more spaceships and ultimately take over the world.

The graphics are very simple but then the best games often are simple. It is a fast pace gamed which is remarkably strategic in its outlook. I haven’t done it justice with this rambling but I don’t think you’d be disappointed if you gave it a go.

So, there we have my top 5 iPhone game app recommendations, what do you think, have I missed any brilliant games? Do I need to reassess my game screen real estate?

Christmas is a time for trying out new gadgets though so it’s time I reviewed my latest toy.

I was sent a swimming watch from Swimovate to try out for a week. It promised to count all my laps for me, freeing my mind to concentrate on higher level issues such as “what should I cook for tea?” and “did I remember to put any Stella in the fridge?”

It does more than that of course, storing my lap history and providing historical data such as distance, stroke rate, calories and efficiency.

It was the counting bit that appealed most to me though. I am always surprised at how inept I am at counting lengths. I start well enough, reciting 1, 1, 1 in my head til I reach the end and turn. Of course I then move on to 2, 2, 2 cos I’m bright and can count but I’m also easily bored so I start adding variety like 2, 2 and the next lap will be 3, next is 3, next is 3. If course when I get to 3 I think blimey that number is familiar I’ve already counted it. Then I have to go through the odd even calculation and match it to the direction of my travel. Basically I never get as far as 10 laps before I’ve stressed myself out and felt the need to re-enrole in kindergarten.

So it’s a lap counter, but a pretty good one. Beyond the first button press you don’t have to bother again until it’s time to get out of the pool. The motion sensors apparently pick up on the drift portion of the stroke at the change round. It will pick up tumble turns and your more sedate stop and turn technique. Provided you don’t change strokes within a length it will supposedly maintain accuracy.

I did my best to fool it but it was 100% accurate up to 16 lengths, beyond that I’m sure the watch maintained its accuracy but I didn’t and decided to just free my mind of the counting. Swimming with a blank mind is really rather freeing, it feels so much more like running.

It’s given me an efficiency rating of 73 which equates to below average which I suppose will be about right. They measure efficiency in terms of distance covered per stroke and I’ve always felt that I swim on the spot anyway.

It would be quite useful to monitor efficiency gains if you were trying to work on your stroke but I didn’t get to play with it long enough to see how responsive it was to minor improvements.

The battery is supposed to last for 1 year after which you have to send it back to the company to be replaced. I suppose that shouldn’t be a big problem provided they have a quick turnaround.

You can’t currently use it as a distance monitor for outdoor swims because it multiplies pool length by laps but I have picked up on some internet murmurings that suggest that might be about to change.

It could do with an overhaul of the user interface, moving through the history screens required me to pull out the instruction leaflet twice but all in all it’s a pretty good adition to the sporting gadgetry world and costs around £69 from Swimovate.