Is a HRM worth using?

Same here i'm intested to see what others say. I believe it would be extremely helpful on recovery days to make certain you aren't running to hard. But I really don't know...

Sorry im no help, i just want to see the other posts on this thread

i think it's interesting to see the data, if nothing else. i can also usually judge paces on mine... at 7:00 pace i'm around 150. so all those times on runs where someone goes "have we picked it up?" i can look at the hrm and get a pretty good idea. it's also good because it will indicate overtraining -- your resting heartrate is higher than normal (i occasionally wear mine overnight to check) or you can't get your heartrate up in a workout. so i like mine.

It could drastically change your PR's for the better. It *helped* take me from a 28:18 8K XC to a 26:46 AFTER taking a year off due to injury. With it, I suddenly had energy available to run high mileage with out it feeling like pure hell. During the season I had good coaching and even more mileage. The monitor is a great training aide.

I believe ya

For the competitive athlete, they're best used for limiting intensity on "easy" days. They can be used in other ways, esp. to indicate overtraining or illness. (I'm involved in the business, and feel obligated to disclose that.)

I got one a few years ago on a whim after having run for many years without one. It was the Polar S-610i so it has the ability to download the data to a PC and view it graphically. I didn't really get much out of it until I started playing around with the software. With the graphs it produces, it helped me to quickly identify and correct a problem with my training that was killing my race performances. Until I saw it there in the data, I was completely mystified as to why I was running like crap.

Paid for itself right then and there.

I doubt that anybody really NEEDS and HRM but many find it useful. Give it a shot. No need to be a slave to it, just see how you like training by HR. But if you intend to try HR-based, do it right. Get a good book on it. If you find it isn't for you, no harm done.

Average Joe,

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly did you see in the data that helped you correct your race performances? Just curious.

I've become a fan of my HRM just from using it on my recovery days.

You don't believe me?

I'm 57. The Age formula predicts a max of about 163. The fitness test on my Polar HRM calculates it to be 174. A month ago I ran a 10K and got a max of 189. I'm estimating it to be approximately 192. Will find out when I have a Vo2Max test in several weeks.

Sorry, my previous reply was for another topic.

I do agree with Average_Joe about the analysis of the data on a PC. Basically I bought my S-625x 380 miles ago and every heart beat for every mile has been saved and available for analysis and comparison. Overlaying plots of identical runs is a good good of tracking how well the training is doing.

Andre wrote:

Average Joe,

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly did you see in the data that helped you correct your race performances? Just curious.

I've become a fan of my HRM just from using it on my recovery days.

I was running too hard on my easy days. You wouldn't know it from the pace I was running. It was at or a little bit slower than my normal training pace. I certainly didn't feel as if I was working that hard. But for whatever reason, my body was working much harder to hold that pace in training. But every race I ran during that period was horrendous. I couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Out of frustration, I started playing with the Polar software. The HR data showed me spending a huge portion of my running time in too high of a heart rate zone. The software produced a nice little stacked bar graph and there it was, plain as day.

I started looking back through the data (I had 1.5 year's worth at that point) and I could see that the one other time in that period that I'd been running like crap, I had also been running at too high of a heart rate for a few weeks. That time, I'd just backed off without realizing it (started running with some people who go slower than I did) and I had recovered. But I hadn't made the connection.

This time, having seen what looked like a pattern, I just backed off. I kept training but I started paying attention to heart rate for a few weeks. Ran pretty slowly for me but the results came right away. Within a week, I started feeling and running much better.

*"I was running too hard on my easy days. You wouldn't know it from the pace I was running. It was at or a little bit slower than my normal training pace. I certainly didn't feel as if I was working that hard. But for whatever reason, my body was working much harder to hold that pace in training."*

That's one of the major reasons I started using a heart rate monitor. I also use a polar. Where do you get the software for it? My dad told me that my monitor also can work with a computer.

Lydiard said no.

I have trained with a HR monitor for a few years now and I've set all my PR's from the 1500-10k since I started. I especially liked it when I was doing most of my training by myself. If you let it dictate every run you do I think you are being foolish but when you are doing threshold and tempo work in your strength phase I think it can be very helpful and can save you from overtraining. It will take you a few workouts to get the hang out of managing your HR so I wouldn't start using it for the first time in a critical stage of your training. That being said, anything you read on that watch is worthless unless you have gotten on a treadmill and figured out you max HR and gotten an estimate of your lactic threshold range.

If you plan to use it on a regualar basis I recommend getting into a professional Physio Lab and having a trained profession do a VO2 Max/ HR analysis for you. The old maxHR = 220-age equation is often times way off and the self administered treadmill tests were way off the two times I tried them. Another thing to think about if you decide to go to a lab and have the test run is to wear your own HR monitor in addition to the lab's equipment. The reason for this is that if there is a variation in the reading you get on the watch and what you got in the lab for a maxHR you want to be able to account for it.

Best of luck.

Ray

WithMeSoFar? wrote:

I also use a polar. Where do you get the software for it?

It came with the monitor.

I used to record workouts as: 10 miles at 6:30 pace.

Or sometimes if I went like 61:20 it would be: 10 miles at 6:08 pace.

Just too concerned about pace on my aerobic running days.

A monitor will let you just record avg. HR which is preferable. If you are compulsive like me, you should focus on recording something like: 65 minutes @ 155 avg HR. Then record the purpose of the run or your feelings or some details. On your hard run days it can help also as you can see where you might be slacking.

The software can illuminate your interval workouts too, but I think this is overkill. Although I suppose you could graph how low your HR gets during the recovery interval. I guess it could be interesting during workouts like 6 x mile, 6 x 1200m and 5-10 x kilo. You could see the difference between a true VO2max workout like 5 x 1000m and a closer-to-threshold workout like 6 x mile.