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[RC] Garmin Forerunner 301 First Impressions - April

I just wanted to give a brief first impression of the Forerunner 301.

For those of you unaware, the 301 is Garmin's recent sports GPS.
Announced early this month, orders started shipping 10 days ago. The
301 combines the functionality of the 201 with a heart rate monitor.
The unit has a suggested retail price of $325. It comes with a human
chest heart rate transmitter, the 301 watch unit (of course), a USB
cable and a disk that installs drivers and the Training Center
program.

www.garmin.com/products/forerunner301

Of course, I could care less what MY heart rate is on a ride (although
that would be interesting to know, too). I want to collect heart rate
data on my horse. So I contacted Roger Rittenhouse of VMAX Equine
Performance Technology and ordered one of his transmitter adapter kits
to use the Garmin chest transmitter on my horse.

I received both my Forerunner 301 and the adapter kit last week. My
husband and I did the adaptation of the heart rate transmitter. It was
simple and straight-forward. Today, I braved the frigid cold of low
20s and 10 mph winds to test out my new tool.

The heart rate monitor worked great. The GPS worked great. My horse
worked great! :-) When I got back, I loaded the data onto my computer
and looked at graphs with heart rate and speed over time or distance.
Very handy. Also was able to see a summary of my horse's average heart
rate over each lap (like 10 minutes of trotting).

Since the 301 is very new, there are no programs besides the Training
Center that can get the heart rate data along with the location
trackpoints from the unit. But that will change as software developers
incorporate support for the 301 in their programs.

Another feature of the 301 that I really like is the ability to set up
workouts on the computer and load them onto the GPS unit. You can
specify a series of steps or laps. For example: 15 minutes at a walk,
10 minutes at a trot, 5 minutes at a walk, 3 minutes at HR between
160-185, etc. The GPS will alert you when to change speeds or heart
rate zones. I can see a lot of possibilities for this feature,
including setting up custom interval training workouts.

I'm quite excited to have this unit and am very pleased that Roger's
adapter kit allowed me to even have it. The directions that came with
the kit were very easy to understand and the adapted transmitter
worked great the first time with no fiddling.

I'll be using this unit from now on. I highly recommend it and Roger's
adapter kit.

For those interested, I bought the 301 from tvnav.com
(http://www.tvnav.com/forerunner301.htm) for $225 after shipping. And
of course, bought the adapter kit from Roger at www.vmaxept.com for
$50 (free shipping).

April
Nashville, TN

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