Runners participating in the Rocket City Marathon (and almost every other race in Huntsville) are not allowed to wear headphones. I started thinking about this after I signed up and decided I'm okay with this. Good thing, the entry fee is non-refundable. Ha! I listen to my radio on my phone when I run and use the Runtastic Pro app to check my distance and pace. Listening to the radio while running in Birmingham (especially on the weekends) is fine - lots of channels, lots of music, few commercials. However, Huntsville doesn't have that many stations to pick from and the three of four songs I do get between commercial breaks very well may be from 1998. Not worth it. My headphones bounce around because I can never get them adjusted right and after a while I just want to rip my phone and arm band off and let my arm swing freely. I guess what I'm saying is I don't really feel like I'm losing anything by not being able to wear headphones.
I decided I wanted a GPS watch to replace my running app, but I couldn't and wouldn't splurge on one of those Garmin watches. They do really fancy things for high-tech runners and that's not me. I want to check my distance, pace, and maybe calories burned. It came down to the three sub-$100 watches above: Timex Marathon GPS, Soleus GPS 1.0, and the New Balance GPS Runner. They all do simple things for runners who want to know the basics about their run. Runnersworld.com had a nice review of these watches and from what I gathered, if you liked one you'd be just as satisfied with the others. I decided to buy the New Balance watch because the testers said it was the easiest to read while running. I can't wait to test it out! Anyway, I guess the whole point of this post was to show runners that there is something in between a basic runner's watch that tells time and has a stopwatch and the really snazzy, high-priced GPS watches. Happy running!
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