I think you'd love one of the Garmin watches. I'm relatively new to running (this was my first 'serious' year), and treated myself to a Garmin Forerunner 305 this past Christmas. It certainly has enough bells and whistles to classify it as a 'gadget'
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Here's a great review of it: http://dcrainmaker.blogspot.com/2007/11/review-of-garmin-forerunner-305.html
Personally, it helped me as a new runner because:
- Easily uploaded stats - which I could review and geek over till my heart was content. (I use Sport Tracks software, as the post above suggests)
- HR monitor - being new to running, this really helped me understand when I could push, when I couldn't, etc...
- GPS/Pacing - knowing the distance during the run is very helpful, especially since it displayed my real-time pace, which I could first of all "learn" (meaning, start gauging my pace w/o even looking at my watch), then proceed on to learning how to make small corrections in my pace.
HTH
-S