Category: Gear

A GPS watch can tell you where you are. A footpod can tell you what your feet are doing. That distinction matters most when GPS is unreliable: on a treadmill, under dense tree cover, beside tall buildings, or during short intervals where pace changes faster than satellite data can respond. A footpod will not transform…

A runner can hold the same pace on a flat road and a steep hill, but the effort required is nowhere close to the same. Heart rate eventually shows the difference, while pace may become almost useless. Running power promises a faster answer: a live estimate of how hard you are working, expressed in watts.…

A heart-rate monitor can tell you that a workout is hard. A good one can also show when it became hard, whether your effort matched the plan, and how your body responded to hills, heat, and fatigue. But not every heart-rate sensor is equally useful for every session. Wrist-based optical monitors are convenient and increasingly…

A watch can tell you that a run climbed 850 metres. That number may look precise, but elevation data is often one of the least reliable metrics on a GPS device. The problem is not usually the sensor itself. Most outdoor watches use a barometric altimeter, which measures changes in air pressure to estimate height.…

A swim watch can tell you much more than how many lengths you completed. It may identify your stroke, count strokes, estimate distance, calculate SWOLF, and show your pace for every interval. That stream of data looks useful—but swimming metrics are easy to misread. The most valuable swim data is not the number that improves…

A smart trainer can turn a spare room into a controlled cycling laboratory. It can hold a target wattage, simulate a climb, record every interval, and connect to training platforms in seconds. But a power number on a screen is not automatically a useful power number. The trainer must be installed correctly, warmed up, connected…

A sports watch tells you that your VO₂ max is 48, then 47 the following week. Should you celebrate, change your training, or ignore the number completely? For endurance athletes, VO₂ max can be a useful way to track long-term aerobic development. But the number on your wrist is not a direct measurement of how…

Your watch says you ran 10.00 miles. The race course says 9.86. Your Strava map cuts through a lake. Your instant pace jumps from 7:20 to 8:45 while you are running dead steady. For years, endurance athletes treated GPS error as part of the deal. Then multi-band GPS watches arrived, promising cleaner tracks, better pace…

You can now buy a portable lactate meter, prick your finger in the garage, and get a number that used to require a lab visit. For runners, cyclists, swimmers, and triathletes chasing better pacing and smarter training zones, that sounds powerful. But blood lactate testing is not as simple as “lower is better” or “4…

Endurance athletes love a number. Pace tells you how fast you’re moving. Heart rate hints at internal strain. Power shows output. Now continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, promise another layer: a live look at how your body is using carbohydrate. That sounds useful, especially if you’ve ever bonked 18 miles into a marathon build long…