The Garmin Forerunner 305 questions thread

[Pheidippides]

I've compared it against myfitnesspal on my phone and to runkeeper (also on my phone--GPS based run tracker) and it matches pretty well. Overestimates road bike by about 10-20%

The 610 is all over the place. I've been on a calorie-restricted diet while training and I found myself feeling pretty fatigued compared to past experiences. It shorts me running by about 30 calories or so a mile. It's way, way off on cycling. I am going to go out on a limb and say that a 2.5 hour ride (that's saddle time) in which I average more than 21 mph is going to burn a bit more than 1200 calories.

I use livestrong instead. I think it overestimates a bit but not too badly.

[Eddie]

The 610 is all over the place. I've been on a calorie-restricted diet while training and I found myself feeling pretty fatigued compared to past experiences. It shorts me running by about 30 calories or so a mile. It's way, way off on cycling. I am going to go out on a limb and say that a 2.5 hour ride (that's saddle time) in which I average more than 21 mph is going to burn a bit more than 1200 calories.

I use livestrong instead. I think it overestimates a bit but not too badly.

After resetting my Garmin305 to my correct weight, I ran 15 miles last Saturday at about a 9 minute pace. The Garmin gave me a calorie burn of 2442 calories for 2 hr 15 min of exercise time. I thought that sounded a little high, but didn't really have a reference point.

I put the same information into livestrong (6.7 mph - a 9 minute pace, 135 min of exercise, 125 avg HR) and it gave me a calorie burn of 3041. Which just seems ridiculously high to me (considering I thought 2442 was high).

Just in contrast to a few other online calculators...

This one only asks for weight, time running, and pace (had to put 7, as it was closest to 6.7 of the choices) and gave me 2407 calories burned:

http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/calculator.cgi

This next one takes weight, time running, and pace (accepted 6.7 mph) and gave me 2306 calories burned:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool...alorie-counter

This one takes weight, time, and pace (accepted 6.7 mph) and gave me a "potential" calorie burn of 2306:

http://www.csgnetwork.com/caloriesactburned.html

This one takes age, gender, height, weight, lifestyle, time and pace (6.7 mph) and gave me a calorie burn of 2801:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned

This one takes weight, time, and pace (6.7 mph) and gave me a calorie burn of 2301:

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php

The heart rate based calorie calculators seemed to give much lower estimates. The following all took age, gender, weight, HR, and time exercising and gave me a calorie burn of 1643 (must be using the same formula):

http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-ex...alculator.aspx

http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com...ge-heart-rate/

http://www.easycalculation.com/healt...lorie-burn.php

Then there is this calculator (thanks Cowboy!), which gives me a calorie burn of 1415:

http://cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?t=5347

Hence my confusion. Apparently I burned somewhere between 1415-3041 calories last Saturday.

And as someone who is tracking calories and has the ability to be just a little OCD sometimes and fixate on accuracy, this can become a little frustrating.

[ERCougar]

After resetting my Garmin305 to my correct weight, I ran 15 miles last Saturday at about a 9 minute pace. The Garmin gave me a calorie burn of 2442 calories for 2 hr 15 min of exercise time. I thought that sounded a little high, but didn't really have a reference point.

I put the same information into livestrong (6.7 mph - a 9 minute pace, 135 min of exercise, 125 avg HR) and it gave me a calorie burn of 3041. Which just seems ridiculously high to me (considering I thought 2442 was high).

Just in contrast to a few other online calculators...

This one only asks for weight, time running, and pace (had to put 7, as it was closest to 6.7 of the choices) and gave me 2407 calories burned:

http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/calculator.cgi

This next one takes weight, time running, and pace (accepted 6.7 mph) and gave me 2306 calories burned:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool...alorie-counter

This one takes weight, time, and pace (accepted 6.7 mph) and gave me a "potential" calorie burn of 2306:

http://www.csgnetwork.com/caloriesactburned.html

This one takes age, gender, height, weight, lifestyle, time and pace (6.7 mph) and gave me a calorie burn of 2801:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned

This one takes weight, time, and pace (6.7 mph) and gave me a calorie burn of 2301:

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php

The heart rate based calorie calculators seemed to give much lower estimates. The following all took age, gender, weight, HR, and time exercising and gave me a calorie burn of 1643 (must be using the same formula):

http://www.shapesense.com/fitness-ex...alculator.aspx

http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com...ge-heart-rate/

http://www.easycalculation.com/healt...lorie-burn.php

Then there is this calculator (thanks Cowboy!), which gives me a calorie burn of 1415:

http://cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?t=5347

Hence my confusion. Apparently I burned somewhere between 1415-3041 calories last Saturday.

And as someone who is tracking calories and has the ability to be just a little OCD sometimes and fixate on accuracy, this can become a little frustrating.

I think this is part of woot's point about counting calories--there are so many factors that affect things besides X food and Y activity, not to even take in account all of the things that affect exercise energy expenditure.

So the answer is--don't be OCD about figures that at best are only accurate to two significant digits anyway.

[Eddie]

I think this is part of woot's point about counting calories--there are so many factors that affect things besides X food and Y activity, not to even take in account all of the things that affect exercise energy expenditure.

So the answer is--don't be OCD about figures that at best are only accurate to two significant digits anyway.

So...after sleeping on it I've decided to take this advice.

Figuring calories for exercise and calorie intake are a great way to increase awareness of my general fitness/fatness trending - but I don't have the ability nor patience to record it as scientific data. So I'll take it for what it is and begin to worry if the numbers on the scale start to climb.