I find the elevation type information much more useful as a reference after it's uploaded to a site like motionbased.

I have a 305 and so far like it. How do you use the multisport feature. I want to be able to wear it while riding, and then just transition to the run. Do I need to do anything with the 305 to enable this? The manual isn't very helpful.
thanks

For more experienced users: Is there any way to change the scales of the graphs that it creates when you load the Garmin Training Center? It's nice that it does everything automatically, but the scale on some measurements is wacky. Pace for example usually ranges from 0 min/mi up to 100 min/mi. Sometimes the bottom end is even -10 min/mi :confused:

I am of course concerned with things in the range of 5-15 min/mi but with such a large scale all the data is compress and you can't make a lot of sense of it. Thanks for any help!

So I've been using the Garmin for a few days, but mostly for indoor workouts. Realizing of course, the satllites won't work that way, I'm not too concerned, I'm just doing long base spins inside. On the first ride, I had been outside with it for a very short run, then come inside and spun using one of the workout modes - calorie burner.

The goal of that is just to work until you burn 500 calories in zone 1. So far, so good until I realize its taking forEVER to get to 500 calories. It was late, so I didn't really investigate, I just realized I'd have to figure it out later.

Tonight I did another spin for about an hour and twenty five minutes, but set the watch to "indoors." It simply didn't track calories. Frustrated, I did some searches and found this post with comments:

http://blog.gruby.com/2006/03/17/mini-review-of-garmin-forerunner-305/

It seems that several people suggest that it calculates calories based on motion and satellite coverage. Which then makes some sense of the other night's ride. I went and "viewed" that ride on the map, and sure enough, there was a ton of satellite drift - probably enough to account for the small amount of calories I was registering.

Does anyone know if this is true? Also, there are several comments about how out of whack the calories counted are, as a result of the same calculation when they run/ride.

I'd really love some feedback to learn if this is true, because if its really as in accurate as some of the comments suggest, I'll return it and get a polar instead.

-C

I've kind of ignored the calorie count - it always seemed like a wild guess... take a look at this old post from runnersworld...
http://forums.runnersworld.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/194106038/m/2751036101

somewhere in the middle of the thread is a comparison of garmin and sportstracks to a number of websites that report calorie burn for a given activity - garmin seemed to be the outlyer in the report.

i called GARMIN about this issue in January. They confirmed that calories was based on speed and not heart rate. That kind of sucks, but the 305 is so damn usefull in so many other areas that i can look past that issue.

Best tool ever for GPS running analysis.

topofusion.com

Think of it as cycling peaks WKO+ for the run. You can track your GOVSS or TSS on the run and chart and plot and forecast out the amount of aerobic stress that you will be training under.

One word: SportTracks

Grab it for free here: http://www.zonefivesoftware.com/SportTracks/

You'll crap yourself after you start using it with the 305.

Also, if you want to swim with it, I wrote up a blog post for how to do openwater swims with it.

So in the interest of learning more about the 305 than the engineers at Garmin:

What gets priority in recording data on the 305, the accessories or the satellites?

When I receive my cadence/speed meter and install it on the bike, does it still read speed from the satellites or will it read it from the accessory? Same question for the footpod. If I bought the footpod and wore it running outside, would the device calc distance/pace/speed from the satellites or the footpod?

Anyone know?

Does anyone know if there is a way to break up laps into different workouts? When I first got my garmin I did one lap as a training run and then the next lap in the same workout was a 10k race. That was my own fault because I didn't know how to start a new workout, but now all the logs are messed up because it tries to combine them into the same activity with a 1 day break in between.

I've never seen that.... perhaps by using mph instead of pace on the left scale?

That's excellent, thanks John. I hadn't posted it, but I had the same question, as there are clearly some blips in my data as well. I tried the same thing with the .tcx file out of the Garmin software and it looks like you can do the same thing there. That's not so hard to do I think. Trick will be finding all the data points to remove efficiently.

I just got the Bike mount kit for the FR 305. It's a nice design - it comes with a new wrist band that has basically the same clip that you mount on your bike. You take the original wrist band off the watch it self and you clip it in and out of the clips either on your wrist or on your bike. It works very well, and its speedy, so pulling it off the bike and clipping onto your arm during a race will be quick.

Went to take it out for a spin last night and *horror* found that I have a flat. Not sure how or when since it went flat while hanging in the rack from the ceiling. Bummer.

Will change over the weekend and take the FR out for a ride. Got the cadence/speed meter too, but haven't installed it yet.