GPS Personal trainer for lap timer?

[Lothar]

My neighbor has a Garmin Forerunner 305 Personal Trainer that he uses for road and mountain biking. It will record lap times and will set by position. It stores 1000 laps and can be overlaid on Maps when the data is downloaded to a PC.

Is there any reason that this could not be used as a lap timing system? Here are the specs:

http://www8.garmin.com/products/forerunner305/spec.html

[dd74]

Subscribing.

[Jack Olsen]

So long as it isn't something you need to be pressing buttons on once you're out on the track.

[Lothar]

Jack,

You would onlt have to press a button once to establish the position of the start/finish line. This could be done on a first yellow flag lap or even track-side next to the s/f line. That asumes that I understand how it works.

[SandyI]

Could be interesting. But will it work inside a vehicle with a closed roof and no direct skyward access?

[V12man]

Time for a cyclist to respond - I tried it with my Garmin 305.

Does it work - yes - sort of - the resolution on the auto lap feature is 1 second - not really good enough.

You have to set it to check the co-ordinates more regularly than you would normally use for your bike. (not an issue)

There are no real features to support anything like sector timing accurately enough to be beneficial (see 1 sec limit), or any real analysis of the data useful for improvement on a track.

Otherwise it worked - even from inside my pocket when I was driving - somewhere I have the results of the excercise - I will look for them if you are interested.

Bottom line - interesting as an experiment - no use for in the car, except as a giggle.

As a result of this test, I bought a Traqmate system eventually - although as a simple timer, something like an ultralap timer is brillant - the most popular solution in this country by a long way for lap timing.

[Lothar]

Guy,

That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for. The 1 second resolution was what I was afraid of. Thanks.