Considering a Blaze for Ultraunning

[GabrielBR]

I use a Surge for ultrarunning but the battery life is not long enough with GPS (typically dies around 10 hours of GPS, which is actually well beyond advertised).  

I see that the Blaze piggybacks off of the phone's GPS and I was wondering how lnog the battery life (from a full charge) is using fitness tracking.  Anyone?  I assume much longer, though you are also at subject to the life of the phone's battery of course, but I can deal with that separately.

I ran the Miwok 100K on Saturday and my Surge held in there dependably until mile 48, when it went dark.  Very impressive nonetheless.  Too bad I didn't get to see my full step count that day (I broke 110K by the time it died).

Thanks,

Gabe

[shipo]

I've wondered about this myself; not that I ever plan on becoming an ultra runner; too darn many miles for this old man.  🙂

My concern with switching to a Blaze would be the mobile phone coverage; I've seen pretty sketchy results from friends who run with me in rural areas and use one of the Fitbit trackers with "Connected GPS".

Thinking about this a bit further, it would be kind of cool if you could charge the watch while you were active (not possible with the current implementation of the Surge), something like, carry one of those emergency mobile phone chargers and plug the tracker in mid-run, whilst on the run, and top off the battery.  Maybe a future release of the Surge, or maybe whatever the Fitbit folks come up with as its next flagship product.

[fudge22]

I am not an ultra runner. I have a hard time running over 10k competitively without having knee pain etc. so I have never ran for as long as you have. I am currently working on strength training exercises to be able to run further distances without as many injuries. Kudos to you for being able to run those long runs.

That being said, I did run a half marathon recently with my blaze connected to the GPS on my phone. As far as I have seen, it hardly affects the battery life. The phone's battery gets drained quicker than the watch since the phone is doing the work tracking the GPS. All the Blaze does is receive that data via bluetoothe throughout the duration of the run. It does this all day anyways so it would seem to not affect the battery life. I would have to say that upgrading to the Blaze would be a smart move as long as your phone's battery can keep up with your runs.

[GabrielBR]

Hrm, well I have had pretty fair service from my phone's GPS when I used to
use Strava so I don't see it being a lot of problems. I wonder if that the
GPS coverage that reached the Surge is somehow impacted in a way that the
phone's built-in apps are not?

[GabrielBR]

Thanks, just the kind of feedback I was looking for about real-world
experiences with the battery life. I have used my phone with GPS for a 11
hour ultra once with the setting switched to reduce battery life as much as
possible and it made it. I suppose I could set up a battery backup
situation as well if need be.

That, or the GPS just dies and I live with no GPS for the rest of the run
but here is another question for you - what happens if GPS quits halfway
during a run?

--
Gabriel Roberts
(408) 561-3600
GabrielBRoberts@Gmail.com

[Rich_Laue]

When it stops raining I can go for a walk, then turn the phone off, to see what happens.

I suspect the Blaze will continue to count the steps, but not sure what the milage reported will be.

[fudge22]

I would need to do a better test that included a few splits from before and after the GPS getting turned off. My test was a minute long and I turned the phone off half way through. In the app, it shows me the map up until I turned the phone off. It also shows me the splits (I don't know if this is just the splits associated with the GPS or the entire run). Under heart rate it shows me the total time and not just the time that was connected to the GPS.

As far as I can tell it just reverts to a normally tracked run and keeps the data from before the GPS was turned off. The splits and total distance traveled after the GPS gets turned off would depend entirely on the pre-defined stride length that you set up for your account and won't be as accurate as the GPS. But it will record the heart rate for the duration of the entire run even without the GPS.

[shipo]

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@fudge22 wrote:

I am not an ultra runner. I have a hard time running over 10k competitively without having knee pain etc. so I have never ran for as long as you have. I am currently working on strength training exercises to be able to run further distances without as many injuries. Kudos to you for being able to run those long runs.

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Not to jack this thread (too much), but I coach a lot of folks both in my company running club as well as a local club, and a lot of them have knee issues.  For them I give two pieces of advice which works about 90% of the time:

• Find a dirt trail, dirt road, sandy beach, or better still, a golf course to run on; each step will require more work, but the extra shock absorbtion pays huge dividends.
• Slow your pace down and extend your runs.  If you typically run say, five miles for your training runs at say, a ten minute per mile pace, slow to eleven minutes per mile and extend your training runs to six, then seven, then eight miles.