Finding which watch to watch for wandering around in the mountains could mean the difference between earning a skull and not. With what’s available today, I can only wish I had this kind of technology back when I first participated in the Death Race, not that it didn’t exist, but battery life was poorer as was I. Breadcrumbs, route planning, elevation data, there is so much incredible information that can be derived from these sophisticated GPS focused watches.
Now, some of you might be wondering, can I buy an Apple Watch and just use that? Probably, but really it’s not the right piece of equipment for this type of endeavor. When you are out in the woods, wandering around, trying to survive the misery that the Death Race organizers are serving up for you, you’ll want to know you have a reliable GPS reading and breadcrumbs to get back to where you started should you ever get separated from the pack.
Not all watches are made the same, and not all GPS trackers are the same, some have a much higher ping rate than others. Some have built-in intelligent battery modes that automatically change ping rate to allow the battery to last anywhere from 25 to 120 hours, some have built-in music storage, finding the right one for you is more a matter of preferences more than anything else. Personally, I will always choose the Finnish-made Suunto
products over Garmin any day of the week but, I can understand why some prefer Garmin’s more personalized features. Both companies are respectable and reputable companies when it comes to GPS watches, so we won’t bother going outside them for the purposes of this post.
Below you’ll find my chosen selection of watches that would be most suitable for tracking and recording your experience at the Death Race. If there ever is another like the 2014 Year of the Explorer, I’d love to see the total miles covered and all the circles that a run and laps crawled from participants watch data. Before we review the watches, let’s take a look at some of the most important features for a watch to have when it comes properly tracking a Death Race.
What Makes a Good Death Race Watch?
Battery Life – This is obviously the most important and critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to selecting a sufficient device for tracking the Death Race. Clocking in on average at over 50 hours of endurance, you can expect you’ll need a GPS watch that can endure as long, if not longer, than you. Finding a GPS watch with a battery that can get through an entire Death Race might be the only truly critical factor you have to consider, everything else is trivial if the battery won’t make it until the endgame.
Accurate GPS – Having an accurate GPS reading and route tracking could provide a massive advantage at the Death Race. If you’re able to know where you’re going and where you’ve been, it can save a ton anxiety from ever surfacing. Trust me, there are a few times I could have massively benefited from owning one of these GPS watches when I was participating in my share of Death Races.
Breadcrumbs – Along with the ability to GPS track comes the ability to leave breadcrumbs, any good GPS tracking watch will be able to provide you with a trail of breadcrumbs you can follow back to your starting point should you ever find yourself totally lost and in need of retracing your steps, you’ll want a watch that makes this easy to do.
Customization – Most quality GPS watches today allow you the ability to customize your sports and the screens they display when you are in your activity tracking mode. This will allow you to display critical elements like, elevation gained, distance traveled, current heart rate, elevation loss, total time elapsed, and so forth. Make sure your watch is customizable to your taste, after all, what good is all this data if you can’t see the data you care to see.
Comfort – If you’re going to wear it for 60 or so hours, you want it to be comfortable, otherwise that’ll be on more thing to irritate you in addition to the onslaught of physical and mental abuse you’re about to subject yourself to. Hey, remember, you paid to participate in this shitshow.
