Suunto Quest

[ski stef]

My thoughtful and generous boyfriend picked me up this watch for my birthday last month. Since I have been training for the triathlon (2 weeks away) I've been interested in the details of my workouts. It came with a heartrate monitor and also a little foot pod that attachs to my sneaker (much like the one you'd get at a running race) and also a USB so i can transfer all my workouts to MovesCount wirelessly through the watch.

It's a pretty neat watch and I think looks really nice too. It isn't to bulky and weighs practically nothing. I'm still learning a lot about it and haven't quite figured out how to maximize all it can do. I need to pick up a Cycling Pod (not the food pod) for when I'm cycling (right now I just use Strava), but I want to figure out how I can change quickly the settings but still keep the time and HR monitor working when I'm transitioning from cycling to running. I also want to see if I can somehow read my HR during swimming..... Need to do some more reading on the interweb.

Anyone else have a Suunto? Do you like it? Pros/Cons? (i've heard it can get quite expensive changing out the battery and getting it resealed) Any neat tricks that I don't know about?

 

[andyzee]

I used to have a Suunto a few years ago, great watch. Used to use it skiing to keep track of all my runs and then upload to PC

 

[marcski]

I have an old Suunto HR monitor watch. It has a barometric altimeter which I've fiund as fairly accurate and is a great feature for bike riding. The strap stopped working so now I am using an old Polar strap...I read they used to work on Pokar's technology.

 

[drjeff]

My wife, who has been a regular triathlete for about 5 years, has gone through 2 Garmin and 1 Suunto watches, and eventually ends up at the same conclusion, that for her at least there is no "ideal" triathlon watch.

Her take is that all of the watches tend to give her the "best" data, that is most accurate and readily accessible when she's on the run portion. All watches are the "least" useful for readily accessible data on the swim (maybe someday they'll make swim goggles with blu tooth compatibles lenses that can project the data onto the lens so that it can be easily viewed without missing a stroke), and she even tried, I forgot on which watch it was with and/or of it was an add on component from a different manufacturer an ear piece that when from her heart rate strap, up under her wet suit, and under her swimcap that that basically "pulsed" her heart rate into it, but as she kept turning her head, she'd often find that for the cord would pull on the ear piece and annoy her.

Bike wise, the watches gave good data, but unlike her stem mounted bike computer that she also has, she'd need to spend more time rotating her wrist into a position where she could see the data on the watch screen and then the size of the screen made it more difficult to read the data compared to her bike computer.

So now, as she competes, her watch is on her wrist. During the swim she starts it when the race starts, looks at it again when she exists the water and heads for T1, then again when she leaves T1 and heads out on the bike so she can get an idea as to how her transition time was, then mainly gets data during her ride from her bike computer, and then uses her watch for T2 data and then the most during her run. She wishes that someone made her "ideal" tri watch, but realizes that it would be a challenge given the easy data display logistical challenges that all 3 events present for a single design item

 

[ski stef]

wow thanks for all the insight drjeff. good to know and also a little disheartening that there isn't the one watch that can "do it all." I did a practice run for my tri with all three and found that I was using my phone, my watch and my foot pod to try and measure all the separate activities accurately.. it is a pain in the butt. Did she still prefer the Suunto over the Garmins? I just love how the Suunto is very fashionable (yes, fashionable) but also extremely functionable.

Does she have any words of advice for me for my tri? it's in 10 days! I'm most curious about if I need a wetsuit (going to the open water tonight to test swim - 68 degrees) and also since I'm a strong swimmer how should I play the swim!? I don't want to wear myself out trying to get up front but I also don't want to get kicked in the face. (it's just a Sprint tri since its my first one. hopefully if I do well I will sign up for an International before the end of the summer)