Garmin Forerunner450CX

Well, I got an early birthday gift. Adam was much too good to me this year... maybe he likes me? We stopped by the Bike Shop after a great lunch with Jill at the Lunch Bag (I had my "special" Reuben- corned beef, kraut, and swiss on top of potatoes!)- and Adam passed me along my new awesome device: The Garmin Forerunner 405CX. I was a little hesitant, or was it intimidated? The watch came in a box with three cables, a USB drive, a plug, and a device that looks like a pulse oximeter. Turns out, the pulse oximeter thing is the charger for my watch. It's pretty nifty.

Anyway, now, I'm sitting on the couch, and I plugged in my USB drive. The watch started talking to my computer, and then I logged into Garmin Connect. The results? Check it out!! So flippin' cool. I think I can handle this type of advanced technology...

The Forerunner405CX is fairly easy to use. The face of the watch has a "touch" bezel, and it can be locked fairly easily. The menu selections are easy, too. The different features of the watch are typed right on the bezel, and if you want to get to one screen or another, you just lightly touch the area (menu, time, training, or GPS) and it will take you to that screen. The auto-scrolling display when the stopwatch is running is cool, too. Up to three features can be displayed on the screen at one time, and up to four different screens can be flashed at various intervals. For example, on today's run, I was monitoring my overall time, pace, and heart-rate on one screen, and just my heart rate on another. The display is HUGE when the feature of interest is displayed. So easy to see. The heart rate monitor is comfortable, very similar to Polars. It's a little bit of a bigger face, though. The battery is replaceable on it, as well, so I won't have to send it in when it dies and wait for another one to come back (not that I've had to do that with any Polar band yet... but I heard that can be an issue).

The only downside is that the watch is fairly big. The bands are not very flexible around the face, and there is are gaps between the band and my radial and ulnar bones. The watch is also somewhat tricky to get synced with the GPS after the stopwatch is started... but that just might take more practice. The cool green color is pretty slick!! The watch looks tough. Adam warned me that its only water resistant, though, and it definitely makes me nervous that the charging nodes are on the backside of the face-- where my wrists get all sweaty.

All in all, I think this is a sweet watch. I am really excited to try it out for my marathon. My old heart rate monitor didn't have laps on it, so just that alone will be great. The best thing will be the large display of time and heart rate... I'm so excited!!!!