GPS Running Watches For Advanced Runners

!±8± GPS Running Watches For Advanced Runners

If you're an advanced runner, it's likely that you have high standards for yourself when you head out for a run. This is true whether you run outdoors or indoors, professionally or just for personal sport.

The more advanced a runner, the more he or she wants to know about their run each day. Seasoned runners keep track of distance, time, and other variables. And while stopwatches and Google maps may give you the basic information you need, GPS running watches are becoming far more popular for tracking and analyzing a run.

Several major manufacturers produce high quality running watches with GPS capability and a variety of functions that benefit advanced runners. Garmin, Timex, Magellan and Casio are among the top brands, but many others are competitive as well.

While novice runners may use just the most basic functions on GPS running watches, runners with more experience and who pursue more rigorous runs are likely to take advantage of the more high end, nuanced features.

One such feature is accessible for watches that include a foot pod. Foot pods are mounted on the shoe and help corroborate not only distance traveled, but the length and pace of each stride. Having this information measured and stored, and easily uploaded when you get home, is incredibly helpful.

Another benefit is that the GPS doesn't track longitude and latitude alone, but also elevation, altitude, as well. This means the watch can actually calculate inclines and declines along your route, and compute that into the report at the end of your work out.

Used in conjunction with a heart rate monitor (often in the form of a belt), the altitude calculation can give advanced runners valuable information about the way their body responds to variances along the route.

Finally, for the most advanced runners, marathons often give way to duathlons and even triathlons. Many of the most high-performing GPS watches include attachments to easily convert the wrist-top computer into a handlebar-mounted computer. They are often also waterproof (to a certain depth), making it possible to have a full workout without having to stop and remove the watch.