Five years ago this news would have had me rushing to the expo, never mind collecting my race number, I would want to get my hands on the latest piece of ‘essential’ training equipment – but my excitement at the news of the latest member to the Forerunner family is rather subdued after my experience with the Forerunner 405.

My first experience of Gamin came with the Forerunner 301 and I quickly became obsessed with it. Downloading and analysing all my training and races, sharing my training routes with club mates and also using it when travelling to record where I had been exploring. I think that a clear indication of how much I loved and relied on my Forerunner was when I lost my watch during a weekend away and in spite of being a poor student, I ordered a new one with two days of exhausting all search options.

Fast forward to January 2008 and the news came out that of the launch of the Forerunner 405. Instead of the bulk and size of its predecessor, the 405 looked like a watch, so could be worn all the time without weird looks form colleagues at work and if you don’t have to take it off after running I have less chance of losing it. But for me I had to get it for the ‘HotFix satellite prediction, which means it locks onto satellites quickly so you can be out the door and on with your run in no time. It also has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver to stay locked onto satellites, even near tall buildings or under tree cover.’ As I was living in New York at the time I often lost signal running around Central Park with my 301 so was eager to get hold of the new 405. With delay after delay the 405 was finally release in May 2008 and after playing with it in a few stores I decided to part with my $349 plus tax. It was the worst $349 I have ever spent.

I don’t know where to start with my hatred of this gadget. I don’t think I have ever hated any piece of equipment so much and far from being a method of relaxation my runs with my forerunner 405 leave me frustrated and more wound up than before I left the house. The Forerunner is so unreliable that I wear both my 301 and 405 when training or racing with the 405 purely to record my heart rate.

To summarise the differences I’ll describe my experiences with both. The 305 is charged by plugging into a standard USB cable into the watch which can be attached to your computer or plugged into the wall. The screen tells you when the battery charging process is complete and you can unplug it and leave it in your training bag. One month later when you go back to the watch if you haven’t used it then you will still have 13 hours of battery life. Also if it says you have 2hours charge left then you know you actually do have 2 hours. If you get to work and remember you need to charge your 305 or are away from home for a weekend then you can use any standard USB cable to recharge it. When you go to use it if you are in a new area then it can take a while for the signal to pick up but never more than 10 minutes. The screen is large and the most important feature being the large chunky buttons that can be activated when wearing gloves, in the rain, with sticky gel covered fingers and without accidentally pressing adjacent buttons. Its major flaw is that in built up areas you can lose signal but this flaw is more than acceptable when added to the ease at programming the watch with a virtual partner and audio training alerts for distance or pace. Laps are easily recorded by pressing the large lap button with the large red stop button easy to see, no matter how hard the rain may be blowing into your eyes. Finally to download the data to your computer you simply plug it into your computer using the USB.

The Forerunner 405 requires a provided clip to charge the battery. Again this can be plugged into a wall plug or computer, but if you find you need to charge it up away from your home (believe me that is a lot of the time) and if you haven’t carried around your charger with you then you are stuck. The other aspect is you can’t just plug it into the wall to start the charging you have to press a button to activate the charging process. Sounds like a simple process but it is frustrating when you go to use the watch at a race and realise it never charged overnight. The other annoying aspect is that if you are charging you and you have a power cut or a light bulb blows you presume that when the power comes back on it will restart charging but it doesn’t. Many times I have returned to my watch after a day of charging to find it has a blank screen. Don’t assume that because you have had it charged for 16 hours that it will be fully charged when you go to use it. Often I unplug it with 100% charge to step out the door and be greeted with the low battery notification and a blank screen before I have reached the end of the road.

A further issue with the battery is how quickly it gets used up trying to find the GPS signal. 30 minutes before a race starts I switch on my 301 and try to get my 405 to pick up a signal. By the time the race starts my 405 will still be searching but helpfully telling me the accuracy of the satellites (so much for the Hotfix satellite prediction). For all this effort I find that my battery life is now 87% fine I think 100% is 8 hours so I must still have around 7 hours left, plenty of time to finish the race. But whilst the 301 picked up the signal within 5 minutes at the start line the 405 waits a further 2 miles before I get any data from it. Things then work well scrolling through my predetermined screens of heart rate, pace, virtual partner, distance.  As I approach the next mile marker I try to press the lap button, and again, and again, in the end I give up it’s not too important I can read it off my 301 or I can distract myself with some maths as I run to calculate my pace. 6 miles in everything else is fine. I have locked the bezel so I can’t accidentally catch it with my clothing, a fellow competitor or passing motorist but my screen starts randomly scrolling not with pace/heart rate/time but with the accuracy of the GPS satellite and battery life and compass directions. Great I don’t know how fast I am running but I do know that I have 10% battery life left. 10%?? How did I use 77% of my battery in less than 1 hour. Before I can check the screen again the battery life warning appears on the screen and the bleeping begins.

‘What’s that telling you?’ asks a fellow competitor ‘are we going too fast?’.

‘No, my battery is low’ I reply

‘Ah, forgot to charge it did you?’

Getting back home I want to download the little data my 405 recorded but unlike the 301 the 405 needs a handy ant stick for wireless transfer. That ant stick that you have to remove when carrying your laptop and fell down behind the drawer or you left plugged in your work computer.

One of my major issues with Garmin is that they know that the Forerunner 405 is flawed and have done nothing to rectify the problem with their customers. I am on 405 watch number three. I cannot fault the friendliness of the customer service people at Garmin. After getting to my uncharged watch again as I set out for a 22 mile run I ring up the customer service line ready to rant at them yet the clear English speaking operator is so understanding I can’t shout at them anymore. Although really I should. Every time they ask me if I have the most up to date software, I say it was down loaded last week, they say there was a new update yesterday I should try that to see if it solves the problem. I hang up happy then a week later conclude it isn’t any better. Occasionally the operator tells me what I am experiencing is a known problem and will send me a replacement. The first one was a brand new 405, the second one exactly a year ago was a refurbished model. Refurbished so well that on its first wear the strap fell off and I had to rush to the London marathon expo to get a new strap fitted before the next days race.

As I said Garmin know there are many faults with the 405 that they quickly released the 410. Comparing the specifications they are identical although the improvements to the Forerunner 410 include:

• Added device shutdown feature to the System menu
• Added banner that notifies customer when the device will be entering low power mode
• Added enhanced touch bezel

There is also the option of two additional wrist straps which allow a more comfortable fit for us thin wristed females. I am not the only person who has experienced problems with the 405 as many online forum users have discussed although the 410 appears to still have issues in the wet. I wish Garmin had offered replacement upgrades to those of us who have the flawed Forerunner 405. I would love to train with the Forerunner 610 with its new touch screen and new functions such as the Training Effect which measures the impact of an activity on your aerobic fitness, but I don’t have the money to risk on a product which may have as many problems as the 405 did when its new bezel was launched. My loyalty to Garmin disappears further with every frustrating run I attempt with my Forerunner 405 and with new GPS watches coming on to the market such the Nike+ sportwatch with GPS provided by TomTom at half the price of £179. Maybe it is time for a change.

Thank you for allowing your lovely dog to join in my training run this week. I felt it very beneficial to have the extra weight, as your beloved fur ball jumped up to my hips and sunk her teeth into my jacket, biting down as I tried to force her off, whilst you just watched. She may have been only playing or being friendly but it’s not the sort of friendly game I like to play mid run. It may have also been nice for you to see how I was, instead of a quick ’sorry love’ then hurriedly rush off down a side road and leave it to a passing motorist to stop and offer me a lift home.

I don’t want to tarnish all dog walkers with the same criticism. In fact scary dog owners and owners of scary dogs in the main are always considerate to passing pedestrians and runners. The dogs wear muzzles and have leads less than half a meter long which they use to pull them to their side or they wait in a driveway as I pass by. My problem is with walkers who I feel are auditioning for a live version of Trumpton to play the part of Miss Lovelace with her uncontrollable trio of  Pekingese dogs Mitzi, Daphne and Lulu.

I was running on the kerb to the left of you, the walker, on the two meter wide pavement with your dog to your right walking on the grass verge. The fact that the dog was able to cross the pavement and jump up to my waist was because you use extendable leads and so not in control of your dog. In fact normally you have more than one furry ‘child’ with leads that span two driveways, causing pedestrians to move into the road to avoid getting tangled up. I don’t mind extendable leads at full length in the right location, such as in country parks and on the beach, but not on a suburban street.

Anyway you will be pleased to know the friendly play resulted in only superficial injury and bruises although my hamstring is still a bit sore from suddenly having to pull up during my tempo run. However, your dog’s next playmate may not be so lucky. My waist is about level with the neck of a child walking by, or playing on a scooter, which you may wish to consider next time you use such a long lead with your agile dog on the street.

Regards

Strenua

With the 2011 Virgin London Marathon soon approaching I decided to sign up for my regular spring training races. Whilst they are races in themselves I like to use them as long training runs over progressively longer distances in preparation for the marathon with a final half marathon two weeks before as a psychological boost to see how well my training has gone.

I only do one long race a month as with longer distances there are higher costs, not only through petrol costs in travelling to the race, (20mile races aren’t held as frequently and locally as 10km ones) but also through race entry fees. I expect that within reason longer races have higher costs, they have more roads that need to be closed, policed, sign posted, marshalled and equipped with toilets, water stations and first aid support. However, apart from a few races, such as Ashby 20 where you receive a hoodie style sweatshirt for your effort or races where you start and end at different locations, many of the other running costs are the same as those of a local 10k. You need the same facilities for changing and parking, the same finishing T shirt or goodie bag and the same timing system so the actual price per mile you pay is around the same. Here are examples of the costs of races I am planning to run this Spring.

Last year I also entered the world’s first Kilomathon running from Nottingham to Derby. Metric marathons (26.2km) are nothing new but the organisers were clever enough to coin the term ‘Kilomathon’ and so promote it as the world’s first and a perfect pre London training race. As it was the first ever event it encountered a few teething issues, getting to the start corals was a bit stressful, the course wasn’t very inspiring the T-shirt wasn’t even specific for that race, and leaving the finish area and finding public transport back to Nottingham was difficult if you hadn’t pre booked the expensive, yet sold out, official transport. But you got a quality medal at the finish and as I mentioned before long distance events aren’t that common so I like to support the local races.

But this year I won’t be entering. Last year had 4186 official finishers and organisers are aiming to have thousands of more runners for the 2011 race which will be held 4 weeks before the 2011 Virgin London Marathon, and is promoted as an ideal marathon training run.

However this year they have changed the pricing and entry system for the 2011 Kilomathons. They claim that new entry system is much more beneficial to charities and also gives runners the option to enter a fantastic road race for just £5. But to enter at that price you need to raise a credit crunching £260. I fully accept that Hope for Children and Rainbows Children’s Trust are worthy charities to fundraise for but may people who are running the London Marathon, which remember the Kilomathon promotes its self as a training race for, are already raising for their favourite charity. A lot of people are also running through Gold or Silver bonds and having to raise between £1,500 to £3,000. It seems to me that it’s a bit difficult to return to your generous friends and colleagues who are already sponsoring you for the marathon to sponsor you again for a Kilomathon 4 weeks earlier so I expect many will end up paying the £45 entry fee themselves.

In addition GSi Events apply a £2 debit card, £3 cheque or a £2.75 credit card fee to process your entry.

Looking at the entry costs through my price per mile calculations, only when you raise a whopping £220 for a Silver entry does the price/mile lower to under £1.

Some events are held for the benefits of runners, Virgin London Marathon although difficult to be accepted through the ballot, costs only £28 (£1.07/mile) and the Silverstone half marathon £13 (£1/mile). Races such as the Experian Festival of Running in Nottingham cost £33 for a full marathon or £15 for the unemployed, with options on the entry form to make a donation to a local hospice or national charity or receive a fundraising pack. Cancer Research UK’s Race For Life series cost £14.99 for 5 or 10km, but are clearly fundraising events and to encourage camaraderie between the female participants and are not trying disguise themselves as an elite sporting event. Then for just £10 you could enter a race such as the 26mile Spires and Steeples Challenge in Lincolnshire which still manages to provide a finishers T shirt, drinks stations, marshals and free post-race massage and soup for a bargain 38p/mile.

Kilomathon organiser GSi Events’ own website admits that they ‘specialise in organising events that provide a fundraising platform for charities. Creating events that uniquely promote charities and companies at the same time.’ Suggesting that rather than providing a service for runners and encouraging people to become active they aim to produce a fundraising event. I’m concerned that with the popularity of the general public participating in challenging sporting events and the reduction of people giving to charities that companies are seeing runners as a an easy target. Just 5 years ago I would enter a local 5mile or 10km race held by a local charity, running club, or village every weekend, but now the frequency of these events are reducing and I’m worried that soon the only events I’ll be able to enter will be those organised by big organisations who see runners and their races as a cash cow. Whilst I wish that Hope for Children and Rainbows Children’s Trust raise a lot of money through the Kilomathon, as a runner I do hope that fellow runners resist entering races with such a pricing structure else I fear this will become the norm and eventually price us out of participating in the sporting events we love.

What do you think is an acceptable price for a race? With the current economic climate are entry fees discouraging you from racing as much as you like? Or are you involved in a charity and think that sporting events are the best way for you to fundraise no matter what the entry fee? Leave your comments below to let us know what you think.

Blistop is described as forming a protective, water-resistant ‘second skin’ which acts as a barrier between the footwear and skin. It has also been awarded the prestigious American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA) Seal of Approval. All you need to do is spray an even layer of Blistop on to clean, dry skin areas of unbroken skin in the areas where blisters may occur and leave it to dry.

Whilst I didn’t have any blister causing trainers to test the spray with, I do suffer when I wear my girly summer shoes with blisters developing on my heels, little toes and across my foot where the straps rub.

In a highly (un) scientific experiment I applied the invisible spray to one foot in the blister susceptible areas and left the other foot. Not wanting to completely suffer for my science I walked for almost 2 miles in my new shoes until they became painful. Looking at my heel the protective layer provided by the spray had broken and my heel was beginning to get red. The instructions did say reapply as necessary and for brand new girly sandals I was quite impressed with a 2 mile walk especially as I imagine for most women they don’t walk more than a 2 miles through the course of a day at work.

Examples of treating heels with Blistop Anti-Blister Spray. Black line on treated heel is the edge of protective layer after wearing shoes.

I admit there are flaws in my road test: I didn’t wear them till skin broke on either foot; one shoe may have been bigger from being stretched in the shop; and a blister may never have developed in the sprayed areas anyway if left untreated. However, I was impressed. Yes Compeed and similar products are probably best for preventing or treating deep multi layered blisters. But they are quite unsightly to be worn with strappy shoes and can be quite expensive to be just worn as a daily prevention.

The spray however was quick to apply, invisible, cheap and convenient to carry around to reapply as necessary. I would not want to recommend it will protect against blisters on a 26.2mile run after all I imagine the layer would dissolve through the damp socks rubbing against it unless you are happy to keep stopping to dry your foot and reapply. However, for small blisters on the toe or back of the heel or rubbing of straps on sandals I would recommend it.

Overall

Blistop is cheap, easy to apply, invisible and protects against blisters and skin breaking. The  spray is also convenient to take it with you if you have missed a vulnerable spot, and to reapply at the first sign of friction.

Whilst it was great for strappy shoes, for runners it may dissolve in wet socks as it was easily removed by rubbing in water. Also it’s probably not so suitable for long events where you can’t easily re-apply.

Flexitol Blistop comes in a 32.5ml CFC-free can giving 50 applications.

It retails at just £5.99 and is available from Boots,  Amazon and other retailers nationwide.

To the people who don’t understand what all the fuss is about, football is the English national game and although we like to talk the players down we do have a good chance to progress to the final stages and it is a chance to be proud of our country.

Unlike America we seldom get to show our support for our own country. We don’t have a national holiday; we would rather celebrate St Patrick’s Day rather than St George’s. We rarely get to fly the cross of St George, as councils and other official organisations think that flying our national flags will upset other nationalities living in England.

I love walking around my local housing estates and seeing houses draped in England flags and bunting spanning the road to neighbours houses, it shows a community spirit that we hardly ever get to experience. I thought there was a great atmosphere around on Saturday from early in the morning; shop workers wore England T-shirts instead of their regular uniforms and kids were waving flags and blowing hooters or practising their own football skills in the street.

Whether it’s Wimbledon, the Olympics or the World Cup, sporting events traditionally encourage people to get out and participate themselves and Saturday was no exception as it was also England Football Day. Young players from all over the country experienced the ultimate football adventure by playing on the pitch at Wembley Stadium, whilst nationwide, over 300 England Football Day events were organised by teams of all ages and abilities.

With the depressing state of our country’s economy at the moment I think it’s great that something has captured the country’s imagination and is raising at least some of the English population’s spirits.

If you doubt the value the World Cup can bring to a participating country then just ask the Irish. Following the incident in November involving Thierry Henry’s hand that knocked Ireland out of the Finals one expert estimated the cost to the Irish economy would be £100 million.

And according to a British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) poll it was suggested that nearly 23 million in total would watch some part of the opening game. 55% of English adults will be watching the first England game, compared with 43% of Welsh and the 23% of Scots that plan to tune in. Actually at its peak 20.1million people were watching the match – the highest TV viewing figures for four years.  The BBPA also estimates that over 21 million extra pints of beer will be enjoyed in pubs during the first three England qualifying matches of the tournament, with around 35,000 pubs showing the matches. With many pubs fighting back through hard times, the World Cup provides a vital boost to the trade, and is the perfect opportunity for fans to support their local pub while supporting the national team.

So if you feel you are a suffering football widow console yourself with the fact that it will be another 4 years till it comes round again, and maybe you could embrace the first World Cup final to be held in Africa and all the benefits it brings to their country and ours.

And finally I know you must be asking yourself where can I buy my own Vuvuzela in the UK? The answer being that you too can imitate a swarm of bees by buying your own South African horn from here. However if the trend for playing Vuvuzelas makes it way over to the UK then surely the most unexpected boost to our economy from this World Cup will be through the increased sales of muffling earplugs.

I was looking forward to try the warmer even though the press release sounded like it had been written by someone who had never experienced the need for one:

‘The Hand Warmer is a great accessory if you’re outdoors a lot of the time – we all know that even in the hottest summer it can get cold at night… This would be perfect keeping you warm in your caravan, as well as being an ideal accompaniment to take with you to the footballing terraces when the weather turns sour. It is also ideal for those taking part in outdoor sports and want to warm up/down’.

My experiences of hot summers are that even in the evenings I’ve no need for a hand warmer as I’ve got a cold drink in my hand; caravans have heaters and if you are cold you have your hands round a mug of coffee or you have a hot water bottle; the people who would use one on a football terrace are the sort who bring a flask of tea with them anyway and for the rest of us can you imagine being with your mates and getting your hand warmer out?  And finally if you take part in outdoor sports you warm up and down by moving you whole body and getting blood flowing though your muscles not holding a hand warmer.

In spite of this I was keen to try it as it is made by Zippo, a worldwide trusted and recognized brand, and unlike other types of heat packs that either only last for 40 minutes, require heating in a microwave, or can only be used once, this is a new liquid-fuel warmer. The Zippo Hand Warmer claims it can produce more than ten times the heat of traditional warmers and lasts up to 12 hours on just 0.4 ounces of Zippo’s Premium Lighter Fluid.

To see how easy it was to use the hand warmer watch the video below. The Zippo Hand Warmer also comes complete with a can of lighter fluid, and using the filling cup you can fill the warmer to work for either 6 or 12 hours. After lighting the platinum-catalyzed glass fiber burner, heat is produced without a flame. It recommends you put it straight away into the warming bag included and you really need to as quickly it felt as hot as a boiled kettle if you touched the warmer directly. After about 8 hours it had cooled so I could hold it without the bag but after giving it a shake it immediately reheated to the initial temperature and lasted for a further 4 hours.

After road testing the hand warmer I appreciated why the press release was a bit vague on where or when you could use it:

• It is slimline, about the size of an iPhone or Blackberry, so fits easily into pockets but you probably want to buy two as it’s not something you would stand about wrapping you hands round.
• If you are going to use it when you watch an outdoor sporting event or on a summer evening out then you can’t be spontaneous when you want to use it as you wouldn’t want to carry lighter fluid around with you so you have to fill it up before hand which also means you have to estimate how long you will need it for as once it’s lit you can’t turn it off.
• After watersports would be when I would find it the most useful, but it’s not a very waterproof product as you wouldn’t want to get the glass fiber burner wet by taking it with you on the water.

I feel that the hand warmer is a really useful product. It is compact, it maintains a high constant heat for a long time, it’s virtually odourless and it’s reusable and at around £20 is affordable. I just don’t know exactly which outdoor activities it is most suitable for.

However, the best use for the warmer that I found though was not for using as a hand warmer but as a heat pack for muscles. Although heat should not be applied in the first 24 hours following an injury, heat application can increase blood flow and promote healing in an injured area.

Heat is also useful to increase muscle temperature and if it’s used before stretching exercises, can increase extensibility of connective tissue such as tendons, ligaments and muscles, significantly increasing flexibility.

Hot water bottles and microwaveable heat packs are great but they are large and quite inconvenient also they need to be regularly re-heated. This hand warmer though was the perfect size to hold against specific muscles or joints and slipping it down some tubigrip round my arm or leg kept it in place even when I was moving about.

Overall I can’t fault the Zippo Hand Warmer for the quality of the product and it performs exactly as it is described, my only problem is recommending when it could be of most use.

Zippo hand warmers are available on eBay, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and leading outdoor stores.