GARMIN vs. NIKE+: The On-Going Battle Of The Runner's GPS

I’ve been running in my Garmin Forerunner 110 for quite a few months now. I love the watch for many reasons, but have my complaints as well. One of my biggest complaints is the lack of online community that Garmin Connect achieves. Basically, the Forerunner 110 collects GPS data as you run, tells you your total distance ran, your pace, calories (inaccurately), elevation, and time elapsed. The next model up features a HR monitor.

Now before I used the Forerunner 110, I had a Nike+ shoe sensor that tracked my runs as a pedometer. My biggest gripe was how inaccurate it was – over the course of the Disney Half Marathon, the mileage difference between watch and shoe sensor was over a half mile. That fucks with your pace big time. But what Nike+ has going for it is a fantastic online community that gives you a visual representation of your runs, challenges, goal-setting abilities, and a social network feature as well. Granted, it’s no miCoach, but it’s enough to motivate.

I felt like a child in the middle of a parental divorce, trying to decide which parent I loved more. Do I keep the inaccurate Nike+ with the awesome social features, or go for the kick-ass GPS watch that’ll show the online community everything about me, including where I live on google maps. I chose the watch and opted to never share any of my run data ever (it literally has a map appear on the page that’ll show all those teen cheerleaders exactly where I live). Granted, the watch has been STELLAR for my training, but I missed the Nike+ online community. I missed achieving greater mileage colors!

Now comes this prime little online hack to the rescue! Thank you Angus Smithson for creating this lil gem. Basically you can point the site to your garmin activity, then to your Nike+ account and it’ll automatically sync the run on over to Nike+. You can choose to include GPS or not so it’s PERFECT for me wanting to keep locations private, but run data public. Boom!

Granted, this might all become moot once the new Nike+ Sportswatch GPS comes out in April…I just hope the price is right seeing as it seems to lack major interval features and other more cutting-edge highlights.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,