So, if you’ve been following along, then you know I had to buy a new Garmin the week of thanksgiving and needed it ASAP so that I could avoid having to use a phone app while I ran because the apps don’t do mile splits and, well, I’m a data junkie so I “need” to know what my mile splits are!!! Haha! Anyway, a while back I had been looking at the 310XT without the heartrate monitor. It has a 20 hour battery life and that was very impressive to me. I could run a super slow marathon time and it wouldn’t run out of battery life on me. This was very important. I loved my Forerunner 10, but it only has a 5 hour battery life. As I said, I will be running the marathon slowly (I should finish around 5 hrs 30 mins), so the 10 wasn’t going to work. Then the 10 started refusing to charge so I broke out my 210 that messed up on me last winter and was able to charge it and it was working. I used it for a week or so and then it went all weird on me and I had to shut it down. I then went on to HeartrateMonitorsUSA.com to see if I could get overnight shipping. When I searched the 310XT I noticed it was really on sale! The 310XT without heartrate monitor retails for $249.99. HeartrateMonitorsUSA.com usually sells it for around $170.00. When I got on their site this time (thanksgiving week), they had it marked down to $139.99!!! I immediately bought it and selected overnight shipping. I went on RetailMeNot and found a 5% coupon that I applied and got another $7 off!
The
next day, UPS delivered my new Garmin, however I was at work, so when I
got home from work I went on their website and changed the delivery so
that I could pick it up
myself from their location. I went and got it the next morning, got
home with it, charged it a little bit…enough that I could sync it with
my computer. I was super syked about the fact that it has an ANT
stick. If you don’t know what an ANT stick is, let
me tell you! It’s awesome! It’s a little USB stick that, of course,
plugs into one of your USB ports on your computer. It’s small so it’s
not obtrusive at all so you can do like I do and just leave it plugged
in. It’s so small, I’m afraid if I unplugged
it that I would lose it. Anyway, with the ANT stick plugged in you
just get your Garmin within 3 meters of the ANT stick and turn it on and
it automatically starts to upload to Garmin Express.
The
clip on charger is better than the one for the 210. It’s only got 2
prongs/contacts instead of 4 like the 210 has…so I feel like it seats
easier for charging. I’ve
only hooked it up to the charger twice, but it is so much easier to
make a good contact for charging than the 210. I would always have to
wiggle the charger clip on the 210 or unclip it and reclip it and it
would take a while to get a good contact for it
to actually charge. With the 310XT, I put the clip on and it instantly
makes a good contact, no wiggling or finaggling with it at all!
Something
else I really like about the 310XT is that not only does it chime when
you hit each mile, but it also vibrates! So, if you don’t hear it chime
when you hit each
mile because you’re listening to music or there’s a lot of
environmental noise, you will feel it so that you know to look and see
what your pace was for that mile. I mean, for the most part, I know my
routes well enough to know when I’m about to hit the next
mile so I know at what point to start looking at my Garmin to see what
the mile time was.
Because
of the 20 hour battery life, I can go like a week and a half to 2 weeks
before having to charge it again. It’s so nice. I’ve only done a few
runs with it so far
but I really love it. I “liked” my other 2 Garmins but I LOVE this
one! A lot of the running blogs I read, this is the Garmin they use, so
I know it has to be a good one. I’m really looking forward to
continuing to run using this watch. I am just really
hoping that it doesn’t crap out on me like the other 2 did.
**this is not a sponsored review.
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