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Kit & Gear

REVIEW: Garmin Forerunner 255 Multisport GPS Smartwatch

The Garmin Forerunner 255 GPS smartwatches help you to train and recover smarter, with features such as race widget which allows you to plan your race-day strategy with daily suggested workouts.

To find out more about the new Garmin Forerunner 255 GPS smartwatch we asked our Sportsshoes.com athlete, Alfie Manthorpe, to put it to the test.

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The Forerunner 255 is the perfect watch for a multitude of activities such as running, cycling and swimming. It's extremely lightweight and comfortable to wear, as the strap can be adjusted for a completely personalised and secure fit.

SLEEP TRACKING

This feature is one that has helped in a variety of ways. Firstly, sleep (along with nutrition) is the most important aspect of recovery, therefore, to optimise recovery you need to optimise sleep. Metrics such as the sleep score and resting Heart rate were especially helpful. Sleep score utilises heart rate variability data to assess recovery evidence during your sleep and compare this to what sleep experts recommend. This was a quick realisation to me that I needed to focus on my sleep score more by going to sleep earlier, reducing my coffee intake in the afternoon, and switching off from technology an hour before bed. I saw a noticeable difference within my sleep score in app and how I felt during the day and my recovery between sessions improved.

 HR TRACKING

The resting Heart rate tracker identified an infection before I knew I had one. A sustained higher resting Heart rate during my sleep detected from the watch made me aware that a factor must be influencing my Heart. I had blood tests because of this, and it turned out I had an infection. Coming out of the other side of this illness I could tell how hard to push myself based on where my resting Heart rate was in comparison to normal levels. This was a much-needed metric and one I use daily to track my overall health as well as the stress I am I putting my body through. A higher resting Heart rate means I like to take the next day easier.

GPS ACCURACY

A very welcome feature is the superior GPS accuracy in comparison to other GPS watches I have used. Living in a city; running in between buildings often leads to inaccurate GPS, as well as when I take to the trials in-between trees. And if you’re anything like me there’s nothing more frustrating than knowing your pace and distance is wrong. Forerunner 255’s Multi-band GPS eliminates the likelihood of wrong signals drastically improving the consistency of GPS readings. This is very evident when doing out and back runs, with distances being exactly the same when running both ways, which is nice, so you don’t have to run around in circles at the end of your run in-order to make up the distance.

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GARMIN CONNECT APP

  • At a glance data – Upon opening the app you can see the important stuff. I have activities, calories, Heart rate, training status and body battery. So, I can easily keep up to date with the factors that directly influence my performance.

  • Send courses and workouts to your device – Being able to make custom workouts and send them to your watch saves a lot of hassle and calculation of splits when training. So more of your focus can be on exercise. This has been helpful because I do a lot of Fartlek training and having all the splits pre-set helps keep track of the session.

  • Continuous analysis – Although I can’t pinpoint a specific metric for this, it’s more of a combination of the whole app that allows you to essentially see your progress in every aspect. If I wanted to track how my sleep as improved over a period of time, I can do it. I can then compare that to my training load during that period and know how much sleep I should need if I wish to repeat a certain training block and have an understanding on how my body should react.

OVERALL

To conclude the Garmin Forerunner 255 isn’t just a GPS watch, it’s a life tracker. The experience you have is so fluid and insightful it has opened a whole new aspect to my training I could never see before. And for a brief stint I used another brands watch for a review, I felt like I was missing out on so much information I never knew I wanted prior to using the Forerunner 255.

SHOP THE GARMIN FORERUNNER 255 SERIES HERE

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HOW MUCH CAN YOU IMPROVE YOUR PB FOR 5K IN 4 WEEKS?

To celebrate the launch of the new Garmin Forerunner 255 series, we challenged two club runners, Kiri Wood and Richard Delpino, to see how much they could improve their 5K time in just 4 weeks, with the help and guidance of the smartwatch.

Check out the Week 1 challenge below:

4 weeks later, we challenged the athletes to beat their times from Week 1.

The question is - did they improve their 5K PB's?

Check out the Week 4 challenge below:



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