I've kinda slacked off for the last year or three (and gained a lot of weight), but I'm now getting back on my running program. I dusted off my polar M400 with the HRM and just did a test run on my wife's elliptical. I'm not sure it's working right. Supposedly, my heart rate stayed in the mid-140s pretty much the entire time. This puts me at like 80% my maximum heart rate. However, I didn't feel like I was exerting myself all that much. I was sweating, but mostly because it was hot. I had no trouble keeping a slow to moderate steady breath for the entire "5k"/30min. I think I could have maintained a conversation with little effort. I also tried using the pulse reader on the machine, which pretty much matched the HRM, but it's also a really old machine. Really, for my RPE, I would have thought my HR would have been in the 120 range. I was feeling like a 4-5 tops on a modified Borg scale.
I checked out the band and the rubber that holds what I believe to be the sensor pad has flaked off on the sides. What I think is the sensor pad looks entirely intact. I think the actual sensor should be fine and it's just the rubber that holds it flat to the spandex strap that broke. In any event, I would expect, for not exercising in forever, for now being quite out of shape, a half an hour elliptical session would have felt much more difficult if I was really in the 140s the whole time. I dunno. What do you think?