Has anyone on this forum used a heart rate monitor while running? There are a lot of these wearable gadgets on the market. Other devices track speed and distance, and I kind of like doing that. But I recently tried out the Armour39 to monitor my heart rate and found the results confusing to interpret. I wrote an article about it for my newsletter. I'm just one person, and so I'd like to hear about other people's experiences with these devices and add them to the article.
heart rate monitors
- Thread starter Laird Harrison
- Start date
I use a heart rate monitor while I run. It is an optical unit. I have run a battery of personal tests on it and it is at least as accurate as my old chest strap monitor. Sometimes I wish it weren't accurate, lol. One thing I did discover with my unit is that you have to have is on fairly snuggly, never uncomfortably, in order to get the most consistent results. Maybe the lady in the CNET article needs to try that. Most of the max heart rate formulas start to fall apart if the wearer is older and that can be a challenging thing to work around. It seems there were two big ideas when the folks who developed fitness zones undertook that task. First, at what heart rates will people be at safe efforts with. Second, based on measurements taken in the past, at what heart rate zones will optimal physiologic changes occur, i.e. at what range will people burn fat the most efficiently, at what zone will people's aerobic physiology develop optimally, and so on. It seems like more than coincidence that optimal development occurs at fairly low, safe, heart rates. Maybe part of our biologic design? Heart rate zones are controversial in our, convenience oriented, western modern day society because we can take great expenditure of energy for granted, and moving more slowly isn't as fun. Take away all of the conveniences of modern western life and plunk us down in the grasslands of Africa and our view of energy expenditure will change overnight. Hope this helps.
I have a Scosche MyTrek, which is an outdated model I found on eBay. It works with the Scosche Rhythm app and also with iSmoothRun. As SI says, the heart rate zones can be a little irrational. It often tells me I am in Zone 6 when there are only five zones?! I find it kind of interesting to see how long I was in the higher zones after a run and what my average heart rate was, but that's about all it does for me
.
.
I use a Garmin HRM/GPS. I try to keep my HR down, so during the run, it is the only metric I am keeping an eye on.
