What to look for in a Sports Watch
Choosing a sports watch means you have to define what kind of runner you are.
If you are deeply competitive, like to record the time not just of every run, but of every lap and insist that the negative split is your goal – you want the kind of all singing, all dancing watch that we seen on the wrists of Olympic athletes – expect to pay an Olympic price too!
However if you just want to time your three times weekly runs, then all you need is a memory function to record times in races or lap times in speed sessions.
Many running watches also have countdown timers. These aren't essential, but a good one can help a great deal when you're doing repetitions – repeating the same distance several times to improve your performance.
When choosing your watch, make sure of the two real basics. Is the watch comfortable? It’s hell to run with something on your arm that slips around, grips too tightly or brushes against your side at ever arm movement. Can you read the screen at arm’s length? There’s no point having a watch with a thousand features if you can’t see the time on it easily or if you find that the buttons are too close together so when you go to check your lap time you find you’ve pressed the ‘erase information’ button instead.
Other important features for regular runners are that the watch should be water-resistant for all those winter runs. It should have a stopwatch so you can time colleagues on the track and a wake-up alarm so you’ll never be late for a race. The best watches also have a strong backlight so that you can illuminate the figures on the screen.
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