I raced a half marathon with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 vs. Garmin Forerunner 965 — here’s the winner

[admin]

I raced a half marathon wearing both the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Forerunner 965, and one watch came out on top with regards to GPS and heart rate accuracy.

I raced a half marathon with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 vs. Garmin Forerunner 965 — here’s the winner : Read more

 

[Mos Chops]

Wow, that heart rate from the Apple watch is hot garbage. Now my FR 255 once in over 6 months of use gave me a consistently low reading until I tightened that strap down - but I've never seen it reading massively high like that. It would trigger an incident warning if it did so glad it doesn't.

Anyway on the pacing front why don't you use the Garmin PacePro feature? I have mine speak the current pace and average pace every half mile and every quarter mile it does a check in and tells me if I'm ahead or behind of my plan. Plus you can have it use a linear increasing or decreasing pace across the race to meet the time you want, and you can even have it adjust pace up or down for hills. Very flexible.

 

[Nick HF]

Hey! The HR was poor that day for sure, has been better in the past but I suspect it locked on to my cadence rather than heart beat for most of the race. On PacePro, I've used it in the past but find it useful mainly for hilly races, because you can adjust the pace to account for ups and downs like you mention. On a flat course like his I knew the pace I needed and it didn't vary, so just checking lap pace occasionally throughout the 2.4km lap was fine.