Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

SLB Plus is a regular reader and runner on Runner+. Recently, he wrote a blog entry about the Virtual Partner feature on his Garmin 305.

• Quadrathon: The VP of 3P

He has been training with his Garmin 305 for a while:

My 305, you have got to love this thing, I have had mine nearly a year have piled on over 1000 miles on it and it’s never let me down. It has a feature rich menu of options which I won’t go into in depth as I know a lot of you have one but the VP [Virtual Partner] is one I have only started using recently and at the moment only on my road bike while on the trainer.

The Virtual Partner is a motivational feature that lets you “race” a little guy. I don’t know exactly how the pace of your VP is chosen, but if you run faster than him, you get to “beat” him.

Personally, I find things like this VERY motivating. Running on Runner+ helped keep me motivated because I could see who was ahead of me that day and try to run further than that person. The VP feature on the Garmin 305 is like a race every day.

When I tested the Garmin 305 at CES 2006, I was unimpressed.

The huge and bulky machine dwarfed my Nike Imara Heart Rate Monitor. Back then it cost nearly $400, but now you can find it for as low as $215. You can also purchase a bicycle cadence sensor so it will tell how you are doing if you are exercising on your bike. To add icing on the cake, you can buy a foot pod, so if you are a treadmill runner (like I am), the 305 can keep track of your distance on the treadmill.

SLB Plus talked about his love for his Garmin 305 before:

• Quadrathon: Back in the flow…

The more I hear him talk about his 305, the more I think that I might have been too quick to judge the bulky watch as an overpriced gadget. It might be time to start to seriously consider the Garmin 305 as a useful training device.

Click here to see Garmin’s Website:

• Garmin – Forerunner 305