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— After a race through 15 miles of rock-laden, hilly trails in Wyandotte County Lake Park, Byron Rieper went online to discuss the competition with other runners.
Many already were sharing their experiences online. Some blamed heat and humidity for their slow times, others recalled unforgiving hills. Rieper, a seasoned marathoner and cyclist who lives in Overland Park, used his watch to offer them a detailed look at the course.
Millions of athletes are using watches like Rieper's Garmin Forerunner 305, which maps his path and records his distance, speed, pace and heart rate. Other devices that use the Global Positioning System are geared at athletes competing in long-distance events, including cyclists, triathletes and hikers.
The popularity of these devices has spiked as more people discover the Web sites where all this information is being uploaded and compared, including SportsTrack, Garmin Ltd.'s MotionBased.com and Nike Inc.'s Nikeplus.com.
Many companies, including Nike and Garmin, have organized running groups people can join to test the gadgets.
"I just think all these free Web sites where people can upload their data has really contributed to their popularity and people are just more aware of GPS either on cars or on phones," said cyclist Jeff Englert, 48, of Shawnee, Kan., who has switched from a handheld GPS to his Garmin watch to compare elevation climbs during his training.
Englert, who has ridden for 25 years, said he logs on the MotionBased Web site to find the best local routes when he travels.
Other fitness monitoring systems include Nike and Apple Inc.'s Sports Kit, which enable iPod Nanos to measure distance without GPS, and Timex Corp.'s Bodylink system, made in partnership with Garmin, which uses a GPS transceiver to transmit data wirelessly.
Timex plans to come out with a new series of GPS watches to compete with Garmin, said Heberto Calves, the company's vice president of marketing.
"The trend of fitness measurement as a whole is growing," Calves said. "It just makes it more interesting, and the technology allows people to get the information they need without a needing a trainer."
Garmin, based in the Cayman Islands with operational headquarters in Olathe, Kan., also recently introduced a smaller fitness watch that doesn't use GPS but measures speed and distance.
"It helps position us as a fitness company, not just a GPS company," said Garmin spokesman Ted Gartner.
Fitness and outdoors products account for about 12 percent of the satellite-based navigation devices sold by Garmin, top U.S. maker of GPS devices. But sales of automotive gadgets, which bring in nearly 70 percent of revenues, are climbing faster.
Runners and cyclists who use the watches said the devices have led them to change their routines. Rieper, who is training for an Ironman triathlon, loads workouts into it and uses the "virtual partner" feature, which makes noise when he drops below a certain pace.
"This really helps, because I ride alone and I run alone because no one wants to do the distances I want to go," he said. "We all suffer from loneliness out there, so it's nice to get some feedback."
But the devices aren't perfect. Some swimmers gripe because they have to put the devices inside their caps and often can't get a signal in the water. Other athletes say the 12- to 14-hour battery life isn't long enough.
"Sometimes the battery dies before some of these longer races are even halfway over," Rieper said. "We have to find other ways to charge them or you just don't use it."
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On the Net:
Garmin Ltd.: http://www.garmin.com
Motionbased: http://www.motionbased.com
SportsTrack: http://www.sportstrack.net
Nike+: http://nikeplus.nike.com
