General Sport & Fitness

Garmin pushes Steve all the way round London

7 May, 2009

Steve Way

With a couple of weeks now passed since the 2009 Flora London Marathon we've received some great stories on how our Forerunner's have aided those competing in the race to get through the longhaul of both the training and the race to the finish line. Here's one that really shows how much motivation our hugely popular products can offer to change your way of life.

 

Steve Way from Poole, Dorset until 2 years ago hadn't ever used a Garmin product for fitness. Following his first purchase of a Forerunner 305 and subsuquently 405, Steve has progressed from a 15 stone non runner to the leading Britain in the 2008 New York Marathon and a fortnight ago a place in the top 30 at London 2009. Check out some recent press here and his recent experience below!

 

“I use my 405 all the time in training to judge my improvement levels by analysing my average heart rate compared to my pace. This has enabled me to predict my optimum marathon pace very well and I knew around 3 weeks before the marathon that I was capable of maintaining around 5:30 min/mile pace for the marathon distance.

 

That was thrown up in the air when I picked up a minor hamstring strain 3 weeks out which stopped me from training properly for a couple of weeks. I was uncertain what this had done to my fitness levels and I knew that I was going to have to react on the big day depending on what my 405 told me. Thankfully my Forerunner gave me the good news early on that I was capable of maintaining around 5:30m/m with a HR below 165bpm (88% of my Max HR) giving me the confidence to stick with my original target of 2:24:59.

 

I missed the target by 1 second but I don't think I can blame the Garmin for that, I just need to work on my sprint finish!”

 

Judging by his splits it wont be long before he hits his sub 2:20 marathon target.

 

Stay peeled to our blog for more news from Steve and his colleagues at Bournemouth Athletics Club as we chart their progress through the National, South West Championships and Road Racing leagues with the ever improving Garmin Forerunner range and Garmin Connect expansion in the coming weeks and months.