More Chi-town Running & The Forerunner 405

This morning (the warmest yet) I just finished a little four mile loop around Grant Park and back to our hotel.  Much of the ice has melted off the lake, but still a cool 34-degrees out.  Wind was light but definitely present.  The fourmiler was a bit weak as my legs were exceptionally tight the whole time.

 

Yesterday I sat out from running, walked about 10 miles through the city though.  Monday I ran a big South Downtown loop, first south through Grant Park, around the Field Museum / Soldier Field and doing the Northerly Island loop.  I came back through the financial district, right under the Sears Tower, on the way to our Hotel.  It was just over 7 miles in total and I felt great throughout.

 

While walking through the Mag Mile yesterday I stopped into the large Garmin store.  They did not have the Garmin Forerunner 405 on display yet, but after bugging the salesperson he brought me into the back and showed me an "engineering model" they have been hiding.  It is MUCH smaller, and much more watch-like than the 205/305.  Even more of the wristband is taken up by the antenna.  It has a touch bezel (iPod-esque) to rotate through the menus, but unfortunately this feature gave some trouble during my test drive.  Also disappointing is that it lacks biking and swimming modes, so it only does running; I really don't see how a few extra lines of code to interpret bike/swim data would be prohibitive.  Of course it's got the wireless sync in exchange for the shorter battery life.  Price point will be $299 without heart rate sensor (you can use your sensor off the 305 too) and $349 with the sensor.  All in all pretty good but I'm pretty happy with my 205 and will wait a generation or two before upgrading.