People exercise for a slew of different reasons. A few love testing themselves against the power of nature and like asking questions like, "What is more powerful, my legs or this mountain?" Others like to break up dull gyms by getting out into the sun and under the blue sky. Still others don't want to fork out the money to exercise in a stinky, grimy hole in a wall. No matter what the reason is why you choose to do some of your workouts out doors you can benefit from a GPS tracking watch.

As the name suggests, these devices can track information - a lot of information. Most true GPS watches record some basic data, like your speed, total distance traveled, and changes in atlitude. These are all things that you might be able to gather without the watch, but the best you will able to get for most of them is a rough estimate.

Not so with a GPS watch. These devices can give you precise information concerning the distance you traveled as well as measuring the changes in altidute along the way. When the watch is combined with a heart rate monitor the information gathered by these devices is particularly powerful.

Here is a quick example: You just ran a 5.5 mile trail in 37 minutes. Without the GPS watch the best you can get is an average speed throughout the entire run (6:46 miles or about 10 miles per hour). With a the watch you can get a glimpse at how fast you were running throughout the entire run. You will be able to see where you ran faster, where you slowed down, and how well you were able to keep a steady pace.

This type of information is very important to those interested in improving their fitness and their stamina. By recognizing the difficult parts of your run you will be able train your body to cope with those situations.

Are you losing speed and momentum on your uphill climbs? Then introduce hillier courses into you exercise routine. Do flat, long stretches tire you out and slow you down? Practicing a quick and easy pace on a cadence might the solution to your problem.

Without the GPS tracking watch you will be forced to rely on your 'feeling' about your run rather than on cold, hard data. Data is much more objective than our feelings and often provides a truer picture of how well we performed.

When this type of information is added to heart rate data taken from a heart rate monitor it can help us analyze our workouts even better. We can get a better gauge of our actual fitness level by seeing the ranges in which our heart performs under the stress of our workout. When this is added to information already provided by the GPS tracking watch we can truely target the parts of our workout that push our hearts and our legs to the limit.

This type of information is simply not available to those who do not use this tracking device. Who has the cordination to hit a trail hard with one hand on their carotid artery while looking down at their regular watch? Add to that the need to notice landmarks and record the times at which you passed them and you get an impossible task for somebody trying to exercise for fitness.

These watches provide all this information without requiring anything additional from you. They fit nicely on your wrist and interface easily with your home laptop or PC. They often even have online software for you to track yand analyse your progress from any computer in the world. These devices are unecessary, but they are still pretty cool.