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Suunto’s new Race 3S is a lightweight, premium racing watch—but at a retail price of $599, it’s a steep climb from the Race S, which is regularly on sale for $299. Still, there are certainly some major upgrades: The battery holds 46% more than the Race S’s, and it’s good for up to 38 hours of dual-band GPS; storage is double the Race S’s, at 64GB. And as always, with the SuuntoPlus store, you can download apps and integrations so your watch can do more than just the default features. After all, the best way to justify the price is to really make use of everything the watch can do. Here are five ways to get more out of your Suunto Race 3S.
(Suunto Race 3S users should also check out these Suunto Run hacks).
Use offline map features to preview your next adventure from your couch
There are several ways you can explore new hikes, straight from your watch or app, and all from the comfort of your home. First up, make sure you download offline maps at home. The Race 3S offers free worldwide offline maps with contour lines and place names, and you pay no subscription. Download your regions over wifi before you leave, so you aren’t relying on a phone signal at the trailhead. The 64GB of storage leaves room for several regions, so grab the places you actually run, plus anywhere you’re traveling. Menu paths can shift with firmware updates, so check the Suunto app if the layout has changed.
From there, build a library of points of interest. A POI is any spot worth returning to, such as a trailhead, water source, campsite, or viewpoint—and with Suunto specifically, you get a broad definition of “POI,” including spots for hunting, fishing, foraging, or wildlife watching. There are built-in POI types for noting where a deer seemed to have rubbed its antlers, where you’ve seen marine mammals, or where you’ve spotted mushrooms. And with the Race 3S, you can store up to 250 of them on the watch.
You can create them on the map in the Suunto app without even being there in person, or when you do stumble upon one, you can save your current location from the watch mid-run. You just have to plug in the POI as a Navigation Target under the options for your trail run or other activity. There’s also a navigation app, accessible from the bottom of the widget list (select All Apps), and you can navigate without having an activity running. Organize them by area before a hiking trip, and you can navigate to a trailhead or a spring with a few taps, with the map showing the terrain around you.
For all the hikers out there, you can use Climb Guidance to preview the climbs. When you load a route, Climb Guidance splits it into flat, uphill, downhill, climb and descent sections, and shows remaining ascent. Use it to decide where to push and where to hold back. It doesn’t set your pace for you, but it lets you pace by terrain.
Set a storm alarm to never get caught in the rain again
Suunto’s Race line includes a storm alarm that watches for rapid pressure drops, a warning sign that weather is turning. It only helps if the barometer reading is trustworthy, so set your altitude to a known reference (a trailhead sign or a verified elevation) before you head up. To turn on storm alerts, go into Settings > System notifications > Alerts > Storm. (This is also where you can set up sunrise and sunset notifications.)
Just remember to recalibrate your barometer every time you start from a new elevation. Also under the Settings menu, you can select Alti & Baro, and then you have the option to either Set altitude or Auto adjust altitude. The auto-adjustment uses a GPS reading to make sure the altimeter is calibrated. But if you know your current altitude from a map, you can set it manually.
Set heart rate zones from your real numbers
Training by heart rate is a great idea, but the default zones on your watch are based on broad formulas and guesses. With the SuuntoPlus app store, you can select Anaerobic Threshold and follow the instructions to find the heart rate where effort turns hard, so your zones reflect your body.
Be prepared: A threshold test is a tough workout. After a warm-up, you’ll be asked to run as fast as you can for 30 minutes. At the end, the app will tell you the heart rate that seems to correspond with your lactate threshold.
Now here’s the cool part: On your watch, go into Settings, then Training, then Intensity zones. Choose either the Default HR zones for all sports (what I’d recommend if you aren’t sure) or choose a sport under the advanced setting. Here, you can set the boundaries between your zones. The boundary at the bottom of zone 5 (and thus the top of zone 4) should be set to the number you got from the threshold test. If you’d like to tweak the other zones, Suunto has more information on how to calculate numbers for the other zone boundaries.
And for any threshold test, where precision matters most, I recommend pairing with a chest strap.
Use these SuuntoPlus apps to improve your running economy
SuuntoPlus apps run on the watch and show extra data during activities, and these two are worth setting up during your training:
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Cadence Coach shows live cadence and stride length so you can work on running form and, in Suunto’s words, avoid injuries. Run a few easy sessions with it, find the cadence that feels smooth, and use it as a target.
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Sprint automatically records your strides and sprints, using wrist acceleration. Instead of tapping laps during strides or hill sprints, just run, and review the efforts afterward.
Activate both in the Suunto app’s SuuntoPlus store before starting an exercise, and watch your running economy start to improve.
Save time getting to your timer
My favorite time-saving shortcut is to pin the timer widget. Widgets are reachable from the watch face by swiping up or turning the crown, and you can choose which ones to show and in what order in the Suunto app. Move the timer to the top, and pin it so a crown press opens it. Then the upper button starts and stops the stopwatch, and the lower button resets it. It’s ideal for intervals, cooking, and race-day warm-ups, and you never have to start a full workout for a quick timing job. The timer remembers whether you last used the stopwatch or the countdown.
Finally, I’m keeping my eye on the launch of the Race Planner feature. It’s meant to build a pacing plan from your route, weather, and goal time, and then guide your pace on race day. Suunto hasn’t announced a date yet, so I wouldn’t exactly buy the watch for it.
