We asked trail runner Emily Thompson to take a run using the new Suunto Race S. We only stock the best in our OS Shop and we wanted Emily to give us her honest appraisal of how this exciting new performance watch faired when really put to the test. Emily decided to test the watch on the Gritstone Trail in Cheshire.
The Gritstone Trail
The Gritstone Trail is 56km and stretches from Kidsgrove to Disley across the Gritstone areas in Cheshire. Starting and finishing at train stations it is possible to do this on public transport, making a through journey easy to do. It passes some of the most impressive hillside features in the county, including the rocky outcrop on The Cloud, the castle-like folly on Mow Cop, White Nancy pillar and Tegg’s Nose. It also includes Lyme Country Park in the North and Macclesfield Canal in the South.
You can find out more about the Gritstone Trail on the Visit Cheshire website.
The route is largely on good bridleways and footpaths. It keeps you away from busy centres and in the countryside, though at Tegg’s Nose Country Park the cafe provides a useful place to either split the route in two or refuel.
Designed specifically for women with a smaller face, the Suunto Race S is pitched as a performance watch for racing and training. As a keen runner and hiker and already a Suunto fan, I was excited to see if this watch would provide everything I needed.
Straight out of the box the watch was easy to set up with my personal data. I already use the Suunto app, and I found it quick to do an update from the app to get the firmware up to date. It was very easy and quick to pair with my phone too.
My initial impression was that the watch was immediately more attractive and comfier to wear than my old Ambit 3, being less bulky, flatter to my wrist and a slick small watch face. The display is bright, easy to read and straight forward to navigate – with the middle button activating the watch, the top button scrolling through activities to start tracking and the bottom button scrolling through other features such as heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, mapping and much more.
Having used the watch a few times on short runs near home, I thought I would trial it out on a full day 50km+ run on the Gritstone trail to see how it faired with a long activity.
Having managed to drain a full battery with my Ambit 3 doing a 16 hour day in the past, I wondered how the bright display and high quality GPS tracking would drain the battery.
The Race S had a fantastic battery life capability – it has lower battery settings which reduce the quality of the GPS tracking accuracy and heart race monitoring which can be turned off, in order to increase battery life up to a maximum of 120 hours.
I did the Gritstone Trail on performance mode which has the highest GPS accuracy and uses heart rate tracking, and even after a 7 hour day the battery was only down to 60%.
It managed to do this by turning off the screen while the watch is in use so the display isn’t always on – raising your wrist to look at it wakes it, or you can push the middle button to be able to quickly see your pace, distance achieved, time so far and heart rate – all on one screen.
One feature I particularly liked was the pause function – I stopped briefly at Tegg’s Nose Country Park café for a drink and the pause function displays how long you’ve paused for – which is handy if you’re racing or on a long run to keep you on schedule.
Having never had a watch which could provide sleep tracking I slept in it one night out of interest. It tracked both my heart race and sleep pattern through the night and fed back the quality of sleep, both time and type. However, the heart rate monitor on the back of the watch has a green light and as a light sleeper I did find this distracting and woke me a few times.
Already being a fan of the Suunto app for uploading data, I find it really easy to understand and reflect on the training information it provides in terms of quality of training, volume and suggested recovery required. It is more straight forward that competitor apps such as Strava, and free compared to comparable apps such as Training Peaks. The app also pushes data to Strava and other apps so you don’t have to lose out on the social aspect these provide to your training.
I had plotted the Gritstone Trail route in OS Maps and transferred this to the Suunto app to import into the watch. All of this was easy to do, and quick.
As well as running and hiking I also tested the watch while outdoor swimming and found the accuracy and visibility of the watch data to be far superior when in water.
Having had the Suunto Ambit 3 Peak watch for over 6 years and been very happy with it, I didn’t expect to find a newer watch much better. The Ambit 3 provides accurate tracking, is easy to use and robust.
However, I was hugely surprised by the Race S – it is so light and comfortable I didn’t find myself re-adjusting it during the day as my wrist got sweaty, and at no point did it bang against my wrist bone as I ran. It tracked my data fantastically, and I’m super excited to have a watch with such a powerful battery life.
I think this is a fantastic watch for women with small wrists, keen to not only track their sporting activity but also have high performance mapping available on their wrist in a device that fits properly.
At £325 rrp this is also not ridiculously expensive compared to competitor watches of the same quality. So more affordable and definitely worth the investment.
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