Anyone who had a heart#

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I went out to Decathlon today at lunchtime (it was cold and the roads were slightly slippery, which I take as vindication of my decision not to go out and skate last night when it was colder and probably even more slippery), to find that the £25 special offer HRM they had before Christmas is now a £17 HRM. As you'd expect for that price it's a very basic model: it tells the time, it has a target zone (and can optionally beep when the user is outside it), there's a stopwatch, and that's about your lot. I spent a lot of time reading about the various advanced features I could have had - with infrared PC download being probably the most compelling - before deciding that I would probably make actual use of them about as often as I train wearing my GPS and therefore there was not much point in blowing upwards of a hundred squid on one.

Lately I've been measuring my pulse before getting up in the morning - it seems to be stuck around 48 - which makes it interesting at least that my measured heart rate in the middle of the afternoon while standing still is something upwards of 90 - or not far off 50% of 220-age. Sitting down knocks 20 off that. Perhaps laying off the coffee would do more.

[ Edit: or then again, getting used to the strap seems to have done the trick. Standing up spikes it for a few seconds, but then it drops back down to 60, which is more or less the same as when sitting down ]