Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS Receiver

A GREAT running tool!

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Nov 25, 2003 | 28 out of 29 found this Garmin Forerunner 201 review helpful

Pros: Satellite tracked pace per mile, distance, goal setting and tracking

Cons: Signal tends to disappear at times

As soon as I found out about the Forerunner, I looked for it in various stores in the NYC area, but no one had it. I managed to buy it on AMAZON.com. When I recieved it, it took about 45 minutes for it to orient itself to the area, and I immediately ...took it for a run. I logged about 5 miles, according to the forerunner 201 - and it gave me a very good idea as to how far I was running. It also logged my run into memory.I then used it in a race that I was running on Sunday in Central Park. It was a four mile race. I set the training assistant feature to set my goal at four miles, under an 8 minute pace. As soon as the race started, it takes about a minute or so before you get an accurate reading as to how far ahead you are, or how far behind you are on your pace. But once it kicks in, it spurred me to run a pace in the mid 7 minute range. The device lost the satellite reading more then once, but it seemed to recover. Relying on the forerunner to tell me where I was in terms of pace helped me to log a personal record in the four miler - a 7:49 pace. (not that I'm the fastest runner in the world).I would recommend this product, but keep in mind that you need unobstructed access to the open sky for it to work. The signals that I lost on my run, were lost because I was running to close to the rock outcrops that line the race route. Be aware of this.Another feature is that you are supposed to be able to download your run data onto your pc. However, for some reason GARMIN has not released this software yet and according to GARMIN customer service, it will be available in January for download at garmin.com. Read more Less