Should you train for the marathon with a smart watch?

One day I walked into my local running store to look at some new running gear, as I’m always into some new piece of clothing or some fancy running shoes. Whilst trying on some new t-shirt I asked the guy who runs the shop about marathon training. I always wanted to run a greater distance then the 22 kilometers I maxed at that time. My wife was looking at me with great big eyes, I did not tell her about this plan, because there was no plan. It just came to mind as I was fitting clothes.

The guy running the place told me he had a group that had just started training. Enthusiastically he asked me which marathon I was planning to run. New York, Berlin or Chicago? Well since I did not plan this at all, I asked him if there was anything in the Netherlands (where I live) . There was, he himself was also training for a marathon in the Netherlands: de Berenloop (freely translated the Bear run) on the island of Terschelling.

There my first marathon adventure started. The trainer told me that the training methods they used where based on heart rate monitoring as it is my understanding most training schedules are. He asked me if I had any kind of running watch which could monitor heart rate. At the time I had a Nike Running watch. This watch could be coupled to a polar chest strap which would show the current heart rate. There was no way to enter heart rate zones, so the watch does not warn you with sound or vibrations when your heart rate is too high or too low. I wanted to wait for the Apple Watch which had jet to come out to use for my training.

I did not plan this marathon thing at all!

The Nike watch would not be very sufficient and waiting for the Apple Watch would take to long. After consulting with my wife and the trainer I settled for a Polar M400 with a chest strap as an in between watch while I would wait for the Apple Watch to come out.

When the Apple Watch came I really liked it a lot. Me and my wife both got one and really got into it with sending each other drawings, filling the rings, using it as an alarm clock, switching watch faces etc.

Then the time came to try and use it for my marathon training. First I tried it with the basic Apple Watch running app. This was hard to do. Once I got going it was hard to switch between the different screens within the app. One screen had the speed and another the heart rate. With my sweating hands it was really difficult to swipe through the screens. Then I tried the Nike app, Strava app, etc. This was no success either. They all depended on the phone a lot at that time. Also I found that the wrist based heart rate monitor did not seem very accurate.

Around the same time the Polar watch started failing on me. This had to do with the micro USB port on the device. A lot of times it would not synchronize with my computer. It had been repaired twice and I was really tired of using it because of this. Aside from the syncing problems it worked fine and it took me through my first marathon.

Sweat made operating the Apple Watch hard to do

The feature I really liked was the ability to put in my training plan on the Polar website and the putting it on the watch. But when it failed to upload the training plans to the watch for the 20th time I was done with it. In between I tried using the Apple Watch again but still it dit not work for me. So I searched online and stumbled on the DCRainmaker website. Being into my second marathon training I wanted something which had the training plan feature, no USB ports and was tough. I was strongly leaning to Suunto Ambit 3 but after reading a lot on the DC Rainmaker site and different forums I settled for a Garmin Fenix 3.

That was a really great watch it had everything I needed for my training and I started also using it during my boot camp training. I took it swimming and it also had I nice navigation function in which you could plan a route to follow whilst running. It served the purpose a lot better then my Apple Watch. I even got into programming a data field for running using Garmin connect IQ: Heart rate runner. To my joy it has been downloaded over 5000 times.

It is huge

Still I was torn between watches, during the day I used my Apple Watch in the office and when I went training I used the Garmin Fenix 3. The Apple Watch had a lot of niceties. Navigating to an address walking or cycling worked well. Apple Watch will let you know when to turn with haptic feedback. A steady series of 12 taps means turn right at the intersection you’re approaching; three pairs of two taps means turn left. I loved using it during the day, soccer scores, messages that could be replied to from the wrist, setting a timer with your voice (very handy when cooking), weather information, calendar on the wrist, stand notifications (I work in an Office), setting a reminder and I even liked sending bad little drawings and heartbeats to my wife.

Then Apple Watch series 2 came. Two key points where fixed: onboard GPS and waterproofing. Also I had very good hopes using the app iSmoothrun. I had tried this app on the original Apple Watch I had but that did not work very well, but after mailing with the desingner and the promise of onboard GPS my hopes where up for Apple Watch series 2.

The workouts I plan for my marathon training look like this:

• Warm up 3 minutes in heart rate zone 1
• Run for 45 minutes in heart rate zone 2
• Run for 90 seconds at 4:45 min/km
• Run for 1 minute in heart rate zone 2
• Repeat step 3 and 4, five times
• Etc.

So after I received the Apple Watch series 2 I started running with the iSmoothrun app which has the ability to put in workouts like the one above. This still was a disappointing experience. The version I used had a problem that the alerts to switch between the different intervals did not always come up on the watch. But there where still other problems as well. The refresh rate for speed during intervals was still slow and also heart rate monitoring on the wrist does still not work very well.

As I’m working out a lot of the time, I gradually started irritating over switching watches all the time. As a test I wore the Fenix 3 for also during office hours for a week. Most things worked fine. The Fenix 3 has an always on screen and a backlight mode which turns on when you flick your wrist and you can set it to do that only after sunset. It also shows notifications but it lacks smileys. It does also show my calendar and has an alarm clock and as a bonus it tracks sleep.

I was surprised how good it worked during the work day. It does not have all the smart watch features the Apple Watch has like voice commands, replying to messages, unlocking my MacBook Pro, etc. All and all it worked pretty well for me except for on big problem, it is huge!

I have pretty small wrists so I really wished that something like the Fenix 3 came in a smaller package. Well I did not have to wait long for that. January 2017 Garmin announced three new Fenix watches: 5X, 5 and 5s. They all had wrist heart rate monitoring and the sizes where smaller except for the 5X (same size as fenix 3) which has some fancy map feature and much more battery life.

Because of my small wrist I settled for a 5s which is the smallest one. The Fenix 5s has more colors then the 3 had, it does have those smileys the 3 lacks and to my big big surprise the wrist based heart rate monitor is working very well. Since it came in April I have not looked back to my Apple Watch. It is such a good piece of hardware if you are into sports like me and I don’t have wear the chest strap for heart rate anymore.

Right now when your into sports like me, my advice is clearly to get a sports watch like the Garmin Fenix 5. It has all the sports metrics you can wish for, it tracks sleep and you only have to charge it once a week or so. That said, if you are just a casual runner and just want to record your speed and route the Apple Watch series 2 is a great watch. If your not a runner and just want a nice smart watch with some health features (and you are in the Apple ecosystem) get an Apple Watch, you won’t be sorry. My wife and recently my mother in law are very happy with their Apple Watches.

My hopes are still up for an Apple Watch which can do what my Fenix 5s can do. That means more accurate wrist based heart rate monitoring and faster refresh rates when recording running speeds. But the absolute necessity for me is a running app in which I can set custom workouts which can be planned into a calendar and then uploaded to the watch. If Apple can get these things fixed I think they can give the likes of Garmin, Suunto and Polar a run for their money, especially because they already have the best smart watch out there, now it just needs to become a great sports watch.

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