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Polar s625x
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The Heart Zone Monitor Guidebook by Sally Edwards. It will tell you how to train using the 5 HR zones.
www.heartzone.com
tallbird - its all your fault :-)
First outing was this morning and was very impressed. Even more so when I realised that "pace" isn't the same as "speed"!
The only problem I'm having is that I've obviously set my Max HR too low as it was hitting 90% on my way into work this morning. Its been so long since I used my Accurex that I've forgotten what it used to be set to. Does anyone in London know where I could get a proper max HR test done?
DT - the 265's CD has a copy of Benson's book "Precision Running" on it.
Phillip, I used the Test in the tests section of my polar to determine my max heart rate and it came out identical to one I was given recently at an intensive medical for work.
Quick question (whilst still reading through the booklet and have yet to test it), for the people who have one of these, did they calibrate the pod first, before undertaking the first run?
My experience is that it's pretty accurate straight out of the box.
I was much too excited to do that :-)
Thanks 3Legs, will take a look.
Been having much fun with the old gadget.
Wore it in a race last night - the so called "Woodland 5". I have always suspected that it was a lot further than 5 miles, and I was right - 5.8 miles!!
Amazing graph though - the route of the run is 2 laps through the forest with a mighty hill in the middle of each lap. The traces for altitude were pretty much identical both times round (as you would hope), and the traces for my speed were amazingly similar, apart from a more pronounced slowing down on the hills on the second time round
Still. Great.
I will callibrate it out of interest I think should I ever get access to a track or some other kind of accruately measured distance - which doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
What's thebest way to calibrate the altitude? From what I can gather you have to do this, although the instructions seem a bit sketchy. I was thinking of taking it down to a beach and setting to zero, would that work?
I think the altimeter is only useful for relative measurements over a short period of time.
"Thank you for your email and very valuable feedback.
I am sorry for the late reply. Unfortunately we have not received your
other emails.
There is a slight latence in the updating of the information send from the
foot sensor to the wrist unit. In order to get the whole distance
information into the wrist unit, it is recommended to let the wrist unit
receive the last data, and you can do so by waiting 15 seconds after end
exercise.
In order to get good interval readings with pace, then 800 meters or more
is the recommended length of each interval.
I understand your irretation of the beeping. You can change the limits
(maybe using the summary limits for recovery), and thereby not getting the
beeping while you do the recovery."
This was in response to an email I sent them commenting on the fact that when you do an interval work out where your intervals are pace based - when you move into the recovery phase, it seems to still expect you to me moving at the same speed as during the intervals. This means that as you are trying to get your HR down to the recovery level, you are continually wound up by the b****y wrist unit bleating at you to speed up. I don't quite understand his response, so have emailed back again, including a few other observations, and the link to this thread.
Lovely.
I agree re the altimeter - it is only really useful on a run by run basis I think. It is great though to see the profile of your route.
3legs - I hear what you are saying re. the calibration, but I guess (and what it suggests in the instructions) it might not be as accurate for you if you pronate badly or something like that - and i am curious.
I'm very pleased with it so far - really enjoying the freedom of not having to run my same old measured route again and again.
The one problem I'm having with it is that I can get it to show me the % of max heart rate, but not % of working heart rate. Can the s625x calculate this for me?
I've read the manual and played with the watch and can't see anywhere to enter my resting heart rate which is needed to calculate the % of working heart rate.
Or am I missing something??
Emcc. I may be wrong but I don't think it can do working heart rate only %age of max and actual HR in bpm.
Does anyone know how to toggle between %age of max and bpm on the display when doing an interval. I ask because last night I had an interval set for a 2 min warmup a single 5 mile interval with pace limits and a 2 min recovery. I used the up and down buttons to tailor the information displayed but couldn't seem to influence the systems choice of whether bpm or %age was displayed at bottom of screen. Anyone know how to do this?
I would have expected such an expensive piece of kit to be able to calculate % of working heart rate. I know I can set the zones using my calulated bpms for the percentages but surely this is a fairly basic piece of functionality for a runner's heart rate monitor which should have been included?
Besides this I'm very pleased with the s625x. As Tallbird said already it's great to be able to see the profile of your run and see the corresponding heartrate and speed changes as you go up and down hills!
The amount of data you can look at when you download your exercise file to the PC is amazing.
Does it have a multiple interval countdown timer similar to the Timex Ironman.
I am trying to start running again before I hit 40. My stamina has declined so much that I have to use the Galloway method of running / walking / running, etc.
My Timex can be programmed to beep at specific multiple intervals so that I program it to beep after 5 minutes of running and then after 1 minute of walking until I finish.
The instructions I viewed online did not make it clear if the Polar can do this.
I need my walk time
TD
3Legs - thanks for the thing about turning the beep off - I did do that in the end, but I still think that it is a bit of an oversight on the part of Polar not to make the wrist unit so that it figures out that during recovery I am not going to running at the same pace as during the interval!
I know, I know - I want the moon on a stick - but for £260, why not?
As for the count down timer question - yes, you can have up to 30 intervals, so could do more than just 5 minutes/2 minutes (or whatever) you can do whatever you want - and with the 625 it doesn't have to be time based, it could be distance based intervals if you wanted.
The fun never stops.
Also - thanks to being caught out in the middle of a serious downpour (and I am talking drowned rat, wet socks territory here) for the last 2 miles of my run yesterday - I can confirm that the footpod can cope with a bit of water without going mental. Which is good.
According to the manual, the battery in the footpod is good for 40 hours of use.
Easy once you know how is probably how I would describe it
I have worn mine for about 11 hours - so far so good.
Sods law that then.
My last post "11 hours - so far so good", went for a run this evening - red light, battery flat.
Hmmm.
Going to assume this is due to the quality of the battery supplied with the foot pod, but monitor closely the running time of it with a Duracell in it.
Much easier to get the thing open second time round though!
Just one minor moan, a vibrate function would have been good, that way you could still listen to tunes while running without missing the "beeps" on the monitor.
Really enjoying using the Polar though and am now starting to get the hang of it, even though I've never even had a HRM before.
I wore my monitor for the Yateley 10k last night and was interested to see that it measured 10.1k.
Also, I had it on auto lap to beep every 1km and it went off early at every mark.
Looking at the information in the software afterwards, it knows that it went off early!! Weird.
Anyway, I got a PB by a couple of seconds - which was nice, and the run flew by because I was so interested in what information the wrist unit was giving me. Great.
Still not sure how accurate we are though....
I'm still just a curious onlooker to the S625X thread, but if the monitor knew it was going off early, then did it know that 10.1km was in fact 10km? If so, why did it say otherwise?
Please elaborate...
So my question to those of you who now have the Polar tool is which would you go for
Polar S625X for circa £260 or
Timex Bodylink for £100 less off ebay
Whats the verdict and why?