In case some of you didn’t know (only those living in mars are excluded) I recently completed my first 50 mile ultra foot race. I will leave the race report glory to one of the 5 other striders that also took part and instead take a look at a special bit of kit I used.
The more Ultra running or even trail marathons that I have ran, the more intrigued I have become by more and more technology used to prevent the runner getting lost and indeed even assist them with pacing etc. Anyone that knows me will realise that if I see it on a web page, and it says “will make things easier” I am like a millionaire with a gold card in Harrods and I’m having it. I can think of many things not just running orientated that I have bought because advertisers said I needed it/them and from the dremel multi tool still unwrapped in my garage to the nuclear fallout shelter I’m still building I have it all.
This was different though, this was not a want but a need. How on earth was I going to navigate myself around 50 miles of Yorkshire without the etrex 20. My journey in to one of these sat nav for runners began a few years ago whilst the coaching officer showed me how lost we were on a race once. Great, if you’re off course it shows you’re off course and that is all I needed to know.
So with my ebay account well and truly kicked, within a few days I had a shiny new ETREX 20 from Garmin sat in my house. I took it to the club to show Jason how great it looked and we were both impressed by it’s really easy to handle size and robustness.
The first error was that it came with very limiting mapping so limiting in fact that when I turned it on it had me somewhere in Cheshire due to the sheer scale of the map being displayed. The whole country of OSM works out at £200 and the fact I paid £139 for the unit itself there was no way that was going to happen. Fortunately I managed to get some maps and have them installed. The next issue was finding the map required to do the 50 mile race (see what I done there? another 50 mile mention).
Jason had the GPX route from when he had previously ran the race (its 50 miles) before. He kindly lent it to me and I added it to the system. On the morning of the race I turned it on and there it was, a great looking map of where I was with a nice little triangle pointing to within 10 meters of where I stood... Just how cool was that I thought to myself before realising that the guy stood next to me had done the event (50 miles) 5 times before and was running a similar pace. I therefore opted to follow his knowledge and have a play later. When exhausted at about mile 3 I opted to start playing with the etrex again. This time it showed exactly where I was and a voice from a nice lady behind me asked if indeed I was holding an ETREX 20? I replied I was and she informed me that she has the same one. I asked her how she got on with it and she said it was “OK” and proceeded to tell me that instead of tracking a route I was doing no more than actually tracking where I was and where I had been. She helped me locate the gpx file Jason had shown me and I was now looking at a nice pink line and bingo I was away.
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| An alternative product for those on a budget. |
However, each time I thought I had it sussed I soon realised It wasn’t working again. I am sure that this is actually a really good piece of kit, but I just do not have the time and or inclinations to learn how too use it. The actual playing around with it took up so much time that in the end I simply opted to follow the excellent route instructions and paper map that I had. I also noted that there is a fantastic app called My trails that pretty much does exactly the same thing only a little better. I have therefore opted to put the ETREX on ebay and await the next great invention from runners world, who knows maybe they will event a robot guide or alike.
RRP £169 or usually available for less from all good retailers e.g. Amazon.
Paul N