Weekend in Arturówek with Garmin Forerunner 405!

Last Thursday I bought Garmin Forerunner 405 and I must admit it's a perfect watch! Running with it is much more pleasant and makes me even more motivated and determined to train hard. The thing I love about this watch is the fact that it shows my current pace and distance, which is really helpful. It has lots of different advantages but it's not the time and place to describe them all. I am just going to enjoy training and orienteering with my new friend;)

On Saturday there was my first race with my new device. This competition was called Championships of Łódź in Night Orienteering. I started in M18 class and took the 2nd place because of making one terrible mistake of over 3 minutes! And two smaller ones of about 90 seconds altogether. What's more, I lost some time in the area of the 13th control, where I met a whole pack of boars. Ok but let's forget about the results...

I would like to say something about the Polish maps... In a special programme to view tracks from my new watch called QuickRoute states: 'Click on a point on the route and drag it to the corresponding location on the map. At least two points along the route, preferably well interspaced, need to be adjusted.' I followed the instructions and adjusted two points... and what did I see? That I didn't visit all the other controls at all!
On the map below I decided to draw how my route choices would look like if I hadn't used my Garmin watch. Thanks to it, I am able to draw one important conclusion. Obviously, none of the GPS watches is able to show the tracks perfectly. However, I see that they have a really high degree of accuracy but what causes all the deviations is the fact that maps are not made precisely enough. That's a pity...
I can't wait to check how my watch works in Scandinavia. I recommend reading Alek's note (search for the post from 2009-10-16) comparing navigating in Poland and Sweden:)


Yesterday my father and I took part in the 6th World Day of Running. It was a cross-country race consisting of two loops of about 4,8km. My watch measured a distance of 9,63km, time of 35:38, average pace of 3:42/km, average HR - 183 and max HR - 188, which let me achieve a satisfying 5th place in the open category:) I started a bit too fast with the leading group (3:31, 3:28, 3:41, 3:28) and then a real crisis came (3:53, 3:58). Afterwards it got a bit better (3:47, 3:54, 3:42) but I had to struggle really hard till the very end of the race. I missed the podium only by about a minute. It is much but is not THAT much as well... So I am pretty determined to train hard and took the podium place in this kind of competition some day:)