The Timex Ironman Triathlon Speed Distance Watch Answers All of Our Questions
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the answers to some of life’s most irritating questions available at the push of a button? Such mysteries as “how fast was I really going when I ran that 5 K race,” “what is my average speed throughout the course of the day?” and the ever perplexing “how far is my walk from the train station” can now be solved by the new Timex Ironman Speed Distance (ISD) watch, utilizing the Global Positioning System (GPS).
It’s one thing to estimate speed and another to actually “see” it. The ISD provides a runner, walker, biker or anybody moving in a direction, with a real time account of speed and distance traveled. Gone are the days of clunky pedometers and tachymeter distance calculations. The ISD puts this data right there on your wrist, and updates it frequently enough to show the payoff of burning out both your knees and shoe leather!
Any LED WATCH that can be used out of the box without looking at the manual passes one of our most important technology screeners. The ISD controls are intuitive and simple enough to provide easy access to multiple information screens while running, a far cry from the complicated menus of most sports watches… AND the data screen is big enough to be seen while bobbing up and down. The case, pushers and lens are plastic and the Nike-inspired rubber strap with swoosh porthole closes with a metal clasp. Timex should have invested the extra money in a scratchresistant mineral crystal lens, which would have effectively quadrupled the useful life of this product.
Utilizing the 24 orbiting satellites which comprise the GPS tracking system allows the watch to provide accurate speed, distance traveled and pace information. And as an added bonus the watch automatically sets itself to the current GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time. This feature alone should give the manufacturers of the atomic clock LED Matrix Watch a real run for their money.The ISD of-fers all the obligatory features found on most watches of the sports variety: chronometer, stopwatch, split or lap timing, daily a-larms and the ever popular Timex Indiglo manually operated backlight system, all wrapped up in a shock and water-resistant case.
Now if the watch were a stand alone unit, like the Casio GPS Pathfinder, it would sweep the category. But dig a little deeper into the package and you’ll meet its ugly big brother: the Garmin transceiver that provides the GPS uplink that makes the watch work.
The Garmin trans ceiver is about the size of a circa 1975 garage door op-ener and about just as at-tractive. It can be worn on the belt or the arm. The in- struction manual cautions that the Garmin transceiver requires a clear view of the sky. Worn on the belt we gave it a clear view all the way through the middle of a city, down a tree lined suburban street and finally out into the country. We received intermittent signals. We retraced our steps with the transceiver mounted on the arm and had much better success. For the runner this means strapping yet another de-vice on your body, which is probably already crowded with a heart monitor and FM radio or MP3 player. For the curious business-person, it means restricting your monitoring to casual Fridays.
At $200 for the 50-lap model and $225 for the 100-lap model the Timex offers lots of technology for the money. On paper the product seems way too cool to be buttonholed into a sports category. In actual use, the ISD offered inconsistent link up capability, rendering it basically a digital LED watch Dot Matrix watch Round watch Dial Men’s watch Wrist Watch for the non-sports oriented, city-dwel-ling user. The ISD is a gem for the runner who wants to monitor track, lakefront or unobstructed country road performance. Clearly the size of the Garmin transceiver is a negative point as are the mounting re-quirements. Maybe Timex should offer it with a special hat hook that will allow it to point directly at the sky, solving both problems at once and providing users with sunburn and rain protection!
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