The games are here! And while it might be a little bit late for me to make the squad (a man can dream, right?), I thought I could have my own mini version of the games at home. With the Garmin Forerunner 255 as my training partner, I set out to see how many events it could track in a week. And whether it was giving me accurate enough data that’d help me to up my game.

The proof’s in the pudding though. So, will we give the smart watch a gold medal, or will it fail to even qualify? Time to find out if it can keep up.

The events

First off, what can the watch actually track? Well, there’s set to be a whopping 32 sports at the games – from boxing to breakdancing, archery to athletics. Garmin say the Forerunner can monitor 60 different activities in all. And judging from the full list (which you can see down below) there’s a ton of crossover with the sports we’ll be watching this summer.

Right, here’s how the watch got on and what I managed to get through in seven days. I’m absolutely knackered…

Football

Let’s kick off with how it tackles a game of football. The standard football activity will track your heart rate, calories burned and the amount of time you’ve played for. But as a bit of a football nerd, I really wanted to see if I could use the built-in GPS to keep an eye on where I ran across the pitch. And make a mini heatmap like you see on Match of the Day.

After a quick bit of tinkering, I made my own slightly edited version of the footy activity that’d also monitor my distance. You can see on the pics down below that I covered almost every blade of grass in my team’s half of the pitch. As a defender – and on the side that had a whole lot less of the ball – there was definitely a lot of running required to keep our opponents out. Oh, and that one direct line into their half you might have spotted was me heading up for a corner in search of a late equaliser. Desperate measures and all that…

And you’ll also probably notice from the screenshots below that I’m not exactly the next Kylian Mbappe. In the three matches I played, I hit top speeds of 15.7 mph, 14.8 mph and 13.6 mph respectively. So, I think his spot on the wing at Real Madrid is safe for now.

Running

While I didn’t fancy signing up for a marathon just yet, I thought I’d go for a small run at least. It’s called the Forerunner after all, so it’d have been rude not to. And once I’d done a 20-minute jog round the block, the watch was definitely off to a quick start.

The dedicated running mode is super impressive. While it obviously tracks the distance you’ve covered, the calories you’ve burnt, your heart rate and all those other key stats you’d expect from a smartwatch, it was the maps I was most interested in. With a Google Maps overlay on the dedicated phone app, you can see your route, but also how fast you were going on a specific section. Meaning you’ve now got a visual excuse for that hilly part where your pace drops to a crawl.

To give you some ongoing goals, it’ll also note down your records for your longest run, marathons, half marathons, 10Ks and 5Ks. And you can share these with your friends and family to create a bit of friendly competition in your WhatsApp group. They can even leave comments trash talking your performance if mind games are their thing. With a bit of regular training though, I reckon that top spot on the podium is definitely up for grabs.

Listen up!

If you want to listen to some tunes while you run, you might not be able to. My Bose QuietComfort Ultra earbuds wouldn’t connect to my iPhone 11 Pro Max while the watch was also hooked up over Bluetooth. Meaning I couldn’t pop Eye of the Tiger on for that extra bit of motivation as I reached the finish line. Saying that, it could just be my combination of gadgets. You might have better luck than I did!

Rock climbing

Sport climbing is a pretty new part of the schedule. It’s split into Speed (get up the wall as fast as possible), Boulder (climbing without a rope) and Lead (climbing with a rope). My local climbing gym does the last two – and having seen how mad speed climbing looks, I’m quite glad I didn’t have to try that.

The watch has dedicated activities for bouldering and lead. For lead, you’ve got to select your grading system first. This gets across how the difficulty of each climbing route is measured. The gym I go to uses the French system, with 4a being easy, going up to higher, tougher numbers and letters like 7c and so on.

Once you’re at the wall, you can then quickly pick from a list on the watch to match the grade of the route you’re about to climb. In my case, I’m training at the 6a kind of level, so that’s what I tracked the most of. Press the watch once and you can start your climb. Completed it? Once you touch back down on solid ground, the watch will automatically stop tracking, letting you save your progress to the app. It’s a great way for ticking off all the routes in the gym and seeing which ones you still need to conquer.

It’ll even measure how many falls you’ve taken. If you’re tackling a particularly tricky route, don’t cheat yourself, and be prepared to note down all those fails. It’ll show up as ‘Attempted’ for now. But when you finally nail it, you’ll get that perfect one and done ‘Send’ you’re after. And if you want to see how high you’ve gone, you can check on that too. In my case, I went 531 ft across the course of the afternoon. Don’t think I’ll be tackling Everest anytime soon…

Bouldering

Bouldering is measured slightly differently. You’ve got a whole bunch of other grading systems for a start, and the watch has three of the most popular ones to pick from. So, you should be covered here. Again, find the one your gym uses and get cracking.

I only had time for a few quick routes at the end of my session, but it seemed to be just as accurate as the lead tracking was. I decided to take it easy as a bit of a warm down though, so the 5+ routes I did weren’t really on the tough side like the above!

Badminton

On a very rare boiling hot weekday evening, it was time for some badminton. In a king of the court format with two mates – where the winner stays on – it was all about quick bursts of speed, exactly like the pros play. Just with a lot more hitting the shuttle off the frame and plenty of wayward shots. But we don’t need to talk about those.

I wouldn’t want to say I didn’t break a sweat (more on that later), but it was a fairly light and easy match for me. I’m not just bigging myself up either – my heart rate numbers can back it up. While I hit a max of 161 BPM during a long, speedy rally, my average time in the standard heart rate zones was spent in ‘Easy’ and ‘Aerobic’. I only actually hit the higher zones for about 3 minutes out of the whole hour, which was during those life-or-death match saving points. And from the graphs down below, I didn’t even hit my maximum apparently.

And in rather icky stat news, how about this for one. The watch uses your data to keep an eye on your estimated sweat loss. In my case, it was 782 ml after an hour-long session. You can then use that to work out how much water you should be drinking to make up for the fluids you’ve lost. Like your mum always said, you’ve got to stay hydrated!

Table Tennis

At the office, we’re lucky enough to have our own ping pong table. And as there’s a battle for table tennis supremacy going on with my colleagues at the moment, it was easy to tick off another classic sport on our lunch break.

Compared to the other sports I’ve done this week, it was definitely the easiest going (and my legs and arms were thanking me). The watch was telling me not to work out that day though. Because it’s tracking everything you do exercise-wise, it builds rest days into your week to make sure you’re not doing too much. After all, that’s how injuries happen.

I thought a few matches wouldn’t hurt. And digging into the stats after I served up a table tennis masterclass, the Forerunner seemed to agree. You only had to look at the Exercise Load score of 2. Exercise Load is just a number that sums up how much impact that activity is having on your body. So, you really want to do a mix of high and low impact exercises each week for the best results.

Sleep tracking

For any good athlete, sleep is super important for rest and recovery. And on the Forerunner, you can see how well you’re sleeping every night – as long as you’re wearing it when you head to bed. I thought it might be a bit uncomfortable (as the watch is fairly chunky), but to be honest, it wasn’t at all. And after a couple of nights, I was completely used to it.

You’ll get a sleep score when you wake up (out of 100), see the total time you slept for and a little quote will flash up on screen to describe your night. Here’s one from the other day:

The higher your score, the better-quality sleep you had. Along with that, there’s an in-depth graph to show you how deeply you were sleeping and when that actually was. A sleep coach then uses all this data to work out how many hours of shut eye you need to get each night to feel at your best. If you’ve had a restless night, it might even suggest a nap or two to get you back on track.

Anyway, after the week I’ve just had, I’m off for a well-earned lie down!

Not sure if the Forerunner 255 is for you? No worries. Have a read of our piece, which smartwatch should I buy? Hopefully you’ll find the right wearable for you in just a tick. And if you’re confused about fitness tech for your wrist, check out this fitness tracker or smartwatch – what’s the difference? article. It’ll clear everything up nice and easy.