Numbers

I really like numbers. Now that I have a heart rate monitor I have a lot more numbers to like. My goal for today was to figure out my maximum heart rate. There are formulas for that, which give me anything from 192-202bpm, but they aren't as accurate as actually going out there and testing it myself.

The test that seems to be agreed upon by most of the sources that I checked involves finding a road that is flat or a mild incline and, keeping a steady cadence around 90, increasing one gear every two minutes until I feel like I can't hold it any more. At that point, sprint as hard as possible for about 30 seconds. So, that's what I tried to do, and I ended up with a max HR of 188. That seems a little low based on the estimates I was getting from formulas, and I didn't really feel like I was at my limit, but I couldn't mentally push myself any harder. I bet that I'll see higher heart rates then that while I'm racing, especially if I'm ever in a position to sprint. Or maybe I just need someone to do it with me.

The other fun numbers that I get from my HRM involve HR zones. This particular monitor gives 3 zones: hard (170-152), moderate (133-151) and easy (114-132). The ranges are set automatically based on my height, weight, sex, max HR, and resting HR. Each time I use the HRM it will record how long the total ride was, and how long I spent in each zone, as well as my max and average HR for that ride and an estimate of how many calories I burned. For example, my ride this morning was 1:25:52, with 23:50 easy, 22:58 moderate, and 19:52 hard. I don't really have an average HR for this ride because I stopped and started the HRM a few times, so the data is all split up. It estimates that I burned 623 calories, which is really low because of a few problems I had.

The problems mostly involved it giving a ridiculously low HR reading. I can guarantee that my HR was never 37 and never will be 37 while I'm on my bike. Frankly, if my resting HR ever gets down to 37 I'll be shocked. Usually it didn't give a reading that stupid. Usually it gave one that was about half of what I thought it should be. For most of the ride I should probably have been around 140, but I frequently saw readings in the 60s and 70s. So, since the HR was regularly underestimated, the calorie count is low and the zone times are only a minimum. I think the cause of the problem was probably the positioning of the band around my chest, and possibly interference from something (maybe my iPod?). It seemed to get better for a while when I turned the iPod off, which is weird but possible, I guess. I'm going to go browse around Polar's website to see if I can troubleshoot it.

Now that I have this HRM I can do a lot more planning of my workouts and make sure that I'm getting the kind of workout I need. It'll be really useful and a lot of fun for things like races to see how hard I'm really working. Ideally it would be a power meter and I'd get to measure my wattage output, but that's a little bit too much for someone like me. Maybe someday.