I am currently playing with a new toy thanks to The Running Bug, who are letting me test one of the new TomTom Runner Cardio watches. Â Rather than rely on a chest strap to measure your heart-rate, this watch measures it through your wrist. Â Having recently suffered a bit of chafing from the strap of my Garmin 620 I was keen to give it a go! Â The Boyf also hates wearing a chest strap as it tends to press on old rib injuries and constrict his breathing so it will be interesting to see if this is the solution for him as well.
I’ll be doing a series of review posts as I get to grips with the watch but it was easy to get set-up and I gave it a quick test at Folkestone parkrun’s inaugural on Saturday. Â I had a minor panic in my warm-up when I realised it was showing pace in miles not kilometres, but I quickly remedied that in time for the main run itself. Â One thing that was a slight annoyance though is that the switch meant that the watch thought I weighed 151kg not 151lbs so the calorie count is slightly out, I was expecting it to auto-convert when I switch unit settings but it seems that needs to be done manually.
I’m pleased to report that on first use the heart-rate of the TomTom Runner Cardio matched that of my Garmin 620Â trace, so that’s a good start. Â I now need to play with the watch a bit more and give it a thorough testing on functionality, so expect more posts over the next couple of weeks.
If there’s a specific feature of the watch that you’d like to know about then leave a request in the comments and I will do my best to cover it for you.