Serious athletes should appreciate the Garmin Forerunner 101. It gives you time, distance, and speed figures for your workouts and stores them for future comparison. And since it has a GPS receiver, it won't let you get lost if you're in unfamiliar area.

Using the Garmin Forerunner 101 isn't difficult. It has two main screen displays, the Timer Mode and the Menu Mode. When in the Timer Mode, you use the Start/Stop button to control when the time and distance are measured and the Lap button to record a completed lap. The Timer Mode has three types of workout-data screens controlled by the UP and Down buttons. The Timer Screen shows your time, pace, and distance. The Current Lap Screen has the lap pace, lap time, and lap distance. The Custom Screen has three data fields for information you choose from 19 different items. The options include such things as best pace, calories burned, number of laps, terrain slope %, and total training time. A fourth screen is for pauses in your workout and shows rest time, rest distance and total distance.

In the Menu Mode, you can access the available menus for viewing records, planning a run, using the navigation features, and initializing various operations. The History Menu lets you see your previous runs. The Forerunner 101 can store up to 5000 laps, up to 250 track log points for your last 10 runs, and up to 3000 points for your last run. You can see data totals for all runs, or break it down by week, day, or just the last workout. Using the Training Assistant Menu lets you set a time, distance, and pace goals for your run. Then during the workout it shows how close you are to them. There also a menu for planning interval training and a menu for setting fast or slow pace alerts, or time and distance alerts.

It shouldn't be forgotten the Garmin Forerunner 101 has a GPS receiver, and the Menu Mode can direct you to the Navigation Menu. With the Navigation Menu you can mark a location, find a location, or see how to return to your starting point. The last menu accessed from the Menu Mode is the Settings Menu. The Settings Menu lets you choose the time format and zone, the distance units, your personal profile data, audible or visual alerts, and language used.