Two Days Off Feels More Like Two Months

Ughh. I took the weekend off to see if I could catch up on some sleep and recover from my mysterious ailment. It didn't help that the temperatures climbed to the 90s and I decided to do yardwork instead. Not as much rest after all.

When I went for my run this morning, I felt like I'd been off for two months instead of two days. The legs felt like jello and even running slowly was an effort. I decided to forgo my usual Monday run over the hilly, local golf course (it's closed every Monday) and stayed on flat land as much as possible.

I ran over to the high school and tested out the difference between using the smart recording and every second data recording settings on my Garmin Forerunner 205. The folks at the MotionBased blog stated that the every second data recording setting "should ONLY be used for specific activities that are short, fast, and tight, like track running."

For my highly unscientific test, I ran 4 laps (1600 meters) in lane 1 using every second recording and then ran another 4 laps using smart recording. I also switched measurement units to metric to makee it easier to confirm distance.

As I previously wrote, the Forerunner 205/305 doesn't do the greatest job tracking on a 400m track. However, using every second recording for this situation seemed to offer up better accuracy. Each lap was right around 400 meters and the 4 laps came in at 1.60 kilometers on both the device and in SportTracks.

When I switched back to smart recording, the laps were coming in at the 390-395 meter range and the total for the complete four was 1.59 kilometers. Not a huge difference.

So if you must use your 205/305 on the track then it's probably better to switch to every second recording for increased accuracy. For everywhere else, smart recording should be enough....

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