heart rate monitor

I bought a polar heart rate monitor last night and tried it out. Its pretty dang cool!

I tried to cycle and keep my heart rate % at around 60-65% but I had a hard time keeping it below 70%. I guess you just have to go really easy. Of course I have yet to determine what my max heart rate is, so 70% is just based off of the info i gave, such as my age height and weight.

There is a book that I have seen a couple of times on heart rate monitors that I am wanting to get. Hopefully that will help me get setup more, as the manual that comes with the monitor is basically crap. Apparently I can upload the data from the monitor to my pc through my microphone input and then send the data to polar's web-site. I was too tired after my biking last night to do that. Tonight I will try it.

But as for the biking itself, I wanted to see how easy it was to keep my heart rate at a steady pace, which I mostly did. But then I wanted to see how my heart rate will vary, so I used an interval setting on the stationary bike. That sure did the trick! during the middle of the intervals I was really hurting and @ one point my heart rate monitor reported I maxed out @ 87%. Not sure what exact number that is but I will check tonight.

Also about the book, I am hoping it will tell you how to train @ certain heart rate zones to improve your heart rate and your conditioning. We will find out.

But so far, the heart rate monitor is definately a good purchase.