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My favourite kit and nutrition
- Maurten — the race nutrition trusted by elite athletes. Gels and drink mix engineered to be easy on the stomach.
- Garmin 90-degree charging adapter — the small adapter that keeps your charging cable tidy at the stem. Essential for race day.
- Garmin charging puck — the fastest and most reliable way to top up your Garmin before a session.
- Ravemen FR300 — front light that mounts directly under your Garmin or Wahoo head unit. Keeps your bars clean and your beam pointed where it matters.
- Garmin Varia RTL515 — radar rear light that alerts you to vehicles approaching from behind. Pairs with your Edge or Garmin watch.
- Stryd — the footpod that brings running power to your Garmin. The single most useful running upgrade I have made.
- Favero Assioma Pro RS2 — the power meter pedals most serious cyclists end up choosing. Accurate, easy to move between bikes.
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Very interesting…
Had several runs with Vantage V2 this week, and it fared quite well compared to Forerunner 945 LTE. There was a spot or two on a 10-mile run where V2 lost the story a little bit, but similarly a spot or two from FR945. Nothing drastic in either cases. I’d certainly expect Grit X Pro to match V2 performance. I remember the original Grit X was solid. At least, where I normally run.
If it indeed performs like Fenix… Ouch!
That said, having followed the route in DCR Analyzer, while it was almost always shifted to the side by like 5-7 m, it wasn’t awfully off like F6 was several times. The total distance neatly matches Ambit, which was the best, and AW. So does heart rate, which is on par with AW and HRM Pro.
I’m sure we gonna see some tweaks to GPS in the post-release firmware.
Any reason FR935, which track looked pretty good, is so much shorter than Ambit?
fr935 was in back pocket and recording HRM-PRO. not valid for gps.
I understand the backpack. But the track looked fine, it’s just come up really short compared to others.
the spreadsheet that has all the results for each device has my official figures for distance for the 935 vs the rest. they are all +/-1% of the median which is interesting in itself
“The best Garmin and the best Polar are not as good as the mid-range Apple Watch at just over half the price.”
The fact two of the biggest names in the sport watch sector haven’t taken OHRM accuracy seriously over multiple generations makes me all kinds of worried.
And I mean seriously, because Apple has been the industry leader in wrist-based ohr for years now. Enough so that multiple apps suggest or demand you use the apple watch for measurements within their program or app.
Not once do you see them say something like “We suggest users use Garmin’s Fenix *X* or Forerunner *xxx* for the best accuracy.” And sure, Garmin and co aren’t building tech just so some 3rd party can piggy back their breakthroughs, but people buy Garmin or Polar because they perceive them as industry leaders in all ways.
None of these companies seemed bothered to make this work.
it’s hard!
but, yes.