moreThe first place I tested my new Garmin Forerunner 405 GPS watch was an August 50k trail race. Besides the well-known downside to using any GPS watch under dense tree cover (poor satellite signals when compared to road running), this race revealed the biggest drawback to the 405: the battery.
Garmin advertises that the 405's rechargeable lithium-ion battery has an 8-hour life in training mode, and a 2-week life while on power save. We kept a very slow pace because of the race's brutal elevation changes, which meant the course outlasted my watch, and almost outlasted me.
On the plus side, the 405's design has many great features that I felt outweighed the short battery life. The antenna is in the section of the band that will most often point toward the sky, which helps keep a more consistent signal. It also locks onto satellites much faster than its older counterparts, though it still comes with the typical signal issues.
Just about any GPS watch is going to be more reliable on the road than on trails. Even though the 405 maintains (for the most part) a steady signal, it doesn't handle switchback turns very well. These routes will most often leave you with a shorter final distance than what you actually covered.
Want to gain distance? Stand still and Garmin will help you inflate your mileage. I left my watch running on a recent hike and was amazed to find out we'd covered .25 miles while sitting down. Nice.
There are also arguments that the elevation charts aren't even close to accurate. I find it's best to ignore all of those complaints and continue bragging about your route's mountain-size elevation gain.
Also great for wide-spread bragging? Garmin Connect, the company's online training tool. Users can upload runs and see them mapped out, calculate splits, see calories burned and elevation graphs. Once uploaded you can use the handy-dandy share tool to e-mail your run or post it to Facebook, Digg, Twitter or your social media of choice. Want to geek out? Here's my map from the 50k.
The watch will wirelessly connect to your computer with Garmin's ANT device. It's roughly the size of most USB drives and works about the same way. Plug it in, make sure the watch is close by and watch the data fly. The watch gets reset with every upload, though, so if you encounter any sort of hiccup while transferring, your run could get lost. There is a manual upload option, which is more cumbersome than the quick upload, but it could salvage your data.
Using the watch is pretty self explanatory. The touch bezel is easy to figure out, but a little tricky to get used to. It also won't work if you're hands are sweaty, which means finding a rare piece of sweat-free clothing to dry the bezel. I find it's easiest to start the watch and lock the bezel to avoid accidental taps. The start/stop and lap functions will still work even when the bezel is locked.
The pacer function is a good training tool, though I wish you could see your total run time while on the pacer screen. It's nice to race someone even when you're running alone.
The 405 is small enough to wear off the trail without looking like a silly 1987 calculator watch, though the band does not get quite tight enough for those of us with toothpick wrists. I went with green; it may not make me run faster, but it's cuter than plain black.
Buy it at Garmin.com or most sporting goods stores. The 405 comes in black and green and will run you $299.99; get it with the heart rate monitor for $349.99.
Sara Davidson is an ultramarathoner and our resident women's running gear destroyer.
