Running Watches. What To Look For

There are loads of running watches to choose from! What to look for in a running watch will depend on what sort of running you'll be doing and how serious you are treating your sport.

For a runner who wants nothing more than to do a couple of runs a week, then you do not need anything fancy, a basic sports watch with a stopwatch timer can be purchased for around $10-20 and should cover your basic needs, which are to measure how long you have been running for. For a little more money you could invest in a running watch that can record a history of your times in it's memory banks. This allows you to go back and compare your recent times against historical runs over the same course.

A runner who has a more structured training program, might benefit from a running watch that can record laps and splits as well as historical runs. Another handy feature for more serious runners is an interval timer feature, which allowes the running of variable length repetitions. For example eight, 3 minute intervals followed by a 2 minute recovery. More advanced watches cover this and more. Some need not cost the earth either.

Many of the Timex Ironman watches are inexpensive, yet can save session history, accomodate the recording of laps and splits within a session and support an interval timer feature. The cost tends to rise when you purchase running watches that feature heart rate monitors or GPS tracking. Highly sophisticated watches such as running watches within the Polar and Suunto line can offer state-of-the-art measuring and tracking of advanced fitness metrics such as EPOC (Excess post exercise oxygen consumption) and Training Effect, an indicator of how effectively you trained over a session. The sophisticated Polar watches measure nearly every heart rate metric available with detailed summaries of the current session and long term history tracking with indicators of how you are progressing with your training.

While you do not need to buy the most feature-laden watch to benefit from what a decent running watch can offer your running program, there are certainly plenty of options for the runner who intends on taking their sport seriously. We will summarise some of the more significant ones in this blog including in-depth overviews of some of the more advanced features in the sports running watch market.