About a month ago, I bought a GPS watch after reviewing a presentation passed on by a colleague. Very cool device. It is a Garmin Forerunner 205 (the 305 has an integrated Heart Rate Monitor). Although this device isn’t accurate enough for sprint training, it is great for going on longer runs, bikes, hikes. It records speed, distance, elevation, grade and summarizes data nicely. You can integrate it with Google Earth to show your path on a map or aerial photo.
The watch taps into satellites above (at least 4 satellites at a time) to triangulate the signals. I did a walk around the track and found it to be within 2 meters accuracy. And, when I walked around in individual lanes, it mapped out discrete paths in these lanes on the mapping software. My next test will be to strap it on a soccer player and have it record their speeds and trace their path on the soccer field (kind of like motion analysis for a game).
Very cool device and very affordable. You can pick one up for under $200 US and tapping into the satellites is free. Some coaches are using it to track the mileage of their team sport athletes for their longer runs (to make sure they actually did the run). It’s like the ankle bracelet they use on Lindsay Lohan for her house arrest. You can strap it onto your teenage daughter to find out actually where she went on her date. Great stuff.
I’ll chime in regularly on my new experiments with the watch.
I have used a triaxial GPS accelerometer with heart rate monitor on soccer players, but costing $ 2500+ for each player, it makes the Garmin a practical, way cheaper choice, although I doubt it has as many features.
The nice thing about it is that you can quantify the technical/tactical work and, with the heart rate monitor, you can see the intensity they worked at.
The one we had gives also speed and acceleration brackets.
WOW! You are full of gadgets
Interesting thing to have and play with? Did you find something worth and willing to share? Can this device show ‘distribution’ of velocities on zones or something?
