Signed up to do a Trail Half Marathon.

My gps running watch has packed up.

It’s been a year or two since I’ve ran properly, in which time I relied on the thing, but I’m not wanting to spend that kind of money to buy another.

So, does anyone run without one? How do you measure distance etc….

Cheers.

I’m not knowing what you’re wanting, but I run without use a gps watch. I am just calculating and the distance and use time to see how I’m going.

You can plot routes fairly accurately using http://www.mapmyrun.com beforehand.
I bought a 2nd hand Garmin Forerunner 15 to use for pacing, maybe worth trying one that way?

If you don’t track it how will you post it on Facebook #knackered #10milerb4breakfast #fellinggreat #smugtwat

Strava app on my phone and a bluetooth heart rate monitor.

Just stick your phone in your back pocket. Even the hrm isn’t as necessary as we think (at least for me anyway)

We did run before GPS!
Stop watch, run the same route, record the times with pen and paper. Piece of string on an OS map.

That’s the advanced technique, marking miles with a pen. Clearly a pro!

Managed 40 years of running without a GPS watch. Has it all been for nothing?

Try using an app on your mobile instead, or consider a ~£75 Sony Smartwatch 3 (although I must point out I’m so far not overly impressed with my one’s GPS accuracy compared to my Nexus 7 2013 tablet).

You can of course just do exercise without a tracker, but personally, I love the record keeping of what I’ve done and how I’m doing compared to my best efforts.

Me. Plan the route before hand so I know the distance and record it on Strava using my phone in an armband.

Yes – run for time and percieved effort level. To know distance for your common runs – map&string, google maps, ride it on your bike all work. For logging just write down how long and what effort level afterwards.

Ultimately the training results come from getting out running often so don’t over think it and just crack on.

You can of course just do exercise without a tracker, but personally, I love the record keeping of what I’ve done and how I’m doing compared to my best efforts.

Totally agree. Many years using a Casio watch in stopwatch mode, but as soon as I could I got a pocket GPS unit (Garmin GPS 40), which was rubbish, 4 AA batteries barely lasted a run, but at least I had a track (not that I could do anything with it, and I don’t think it remembered it after replacing the batteries!)

If you used to run with one then you’ll have a really good feel for the length of a run and the level of exertion you are running at.
Also, unless you have moved house, all of your old routes will still be there! 🙂
Here is the Borg scale, which roughly (roughly!) correlates with your heart rate if you stick a zero on the end, ie level 6 = 60 bpm all the way up to level 20 which = 200 bpm

And remember- train to your current level of fitness, not what you used to be!! It will have changed!! 🙂

And remember- train to your current level of fitness, not what you used to be!! It will have changed!!

This i where a heart rate monitor might be useful. It can also be very useful to indicate if you are overtraining.

I used to stick my phone in a pocket with Runkeeper running. Headphones, stick some music on, and it’ll give you voice updates every so often on your time / distance.

I use my garmin edge 1000 on a wrist strap I got from eBay, the heart monitor strap as normal. I rarely need the gps unless I’m off somewhere new so a lot of the time it’s in my key pocket just logging the data. The wrist strap is a bit crude TBH and i do wear it on my forearm mostly.

OP you can get Tom Tom GPS watches for £50.

Found out that for the run, you need to carry a phone for emergencies, so I may as well just use that then.

And I did a 30 min run the other day. Legs thought I had just completed a marathon.
This is going to take some building up to do.

Very rarely any more – though when I eventually recover from injury and can run freely without having to limit myself I probably will a lot more. Did for years before I owned one however – when I first got a GPS pod for my watch I was already on the decline, all my best years were without any means of measuring distance/speed on the fly.

Distance measured with stopwatch, OS map or with a bike on a set route depending on how much accuracy I needed. Most of my runs I just timed, the bike was just used to set up courses for interval training (I think there may still be blobs of paint marking out distance on one of the paths I used so I could keep an eye on my pace during the course of a longer interval – how archaic that now seems!), and I owned one of these for use with maps:

Contrary to what appears to be current belief you can train perfectly adequately for running without having any idea of how far you’ve run though.

If using trainer road for turbo sessions has taught me 1 thing, it is that my perception of effort is useless.

I saw a review on dc rainmaker recently for a running power meter using a footpod, I guess it works it out from multiple inputs rather than actually being able to directly measure power, but it would be interesting if effort could be gauged for running in the same/similar way it is with cycling.

Smartphone and armband if you have a smartphone.

My brother in law has a cheapo GPS watch he got from eBay – unknown chinese make. Works pretty much as well as my Garmin.

Or a cheap 2nd hand entry level GPS watch from fleabay if you want the Strava/mapmyrun connectivity

Yep I do, I’m a bit of a luddite.
No GPS watch for runnning, no GPS for cycling.

I use mapometer to plan a route and then just run it to how I’m feeling.
It seems to work OK for me but most people at my running club can’t get their heads around it.

I used to record runs/rides on a DB but never bothered to look at the data so sacked the idea.

Set yourself free – Liberty, equality, running free 🙂

i run a couple of times a week at work. No GPS watch, but iphone in the pocket recording the time.

i work out the route beforehand with ridewithgps, then just run. If i feel fine,then i push a bit harder. If i feel knackered, i run a bit slower.

Turns out all my runs are the same speed (pretty much). So i now know my pace and can just run at that for a long time.

No watch needed, but i wouldn’t mind the wahoo one when they bring it out.

Intresting reading here. I was about to buy a gps watch thinking it would be more accurate than a phone

Looks like I was wrong

http://fellrnr.com/wiki/GPS_Accuracy

Just run until your eyeballs pop then stop!

Ran without a GPS in the 70s and still managed to run quite quickly when it came to race day. Our intervals were guessed but that doesnt matter, comparison with the same distance (under or over) is all that matters. I had a feeling that I wasnt running under 2 mins for my 800M intervals but so what 🙂

Find a loop that looks appropriate and run it regularly, time yourself sometimes and occasional try to run it faster so that it really hurts, mission accomplished. The only distance that counts is the one when you are wearing a number. Everything else is prep.

as an aside I remember turning up to run a (short) Monday night 10 with my clubmates only to find it wasnt short after all (well about 100m) we had been running it regularly in about 55 mins thinking it was about 9ish!