First ride with the polar
Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 5:40 pm
Well today was the first ride with the polar.
First impressions were that the chest strap was quite comfortable and didn't move around at all for the duration of the ride. I had problems seeing most of the small stuff on the screen but the heart rate , cadence and speed were large enough to make out without needing to wear my reading glasses.
It was interesting to see how the daily ride stacked up when riding with the hrm. I set off leaving out the shorncliffe loop, thinking that i would ride normally and set the display to show % of max heart rate, the limits between 60% and 80% and keep an eye on it.
There was a stiff 8-12kph headwind for most of the ride to the nundah crit track so it was time to knuckle down and make the best of it.
Normally i would just go as quick as i could for as long as i could, recover a bit then pick up the pace again, but this ride the hrm kept saying "slow down!" . It was a task to keep it under the 80% and it was just too slow to even try for the 70% and maximize that fat burning zone so i placed my faith in the fact that I would burn more total calories.
Doing a standing sprint up the dump hill i hit my max hr for the ride of 95%, i felt that! . On shultzes canal I reverted to the normal ride style and found for most of the stretch i was hovering around the 85%, on the way back it was tail wind so i kept it at 80%, spinning up the dump hill this time it was 84% and averaged 74% through the windy bits in the wetlands.
Stats for the ride
Duration 1h 50 mins
Distance 41klm
Calories 1247
Hr max 95% - 165bpm
Hr avg 80% - 139bpm
Time in zone - 1hr 10 mins
Speed avg 27kph
Speed max 38kph
Cadence avg 87rpm
Cadence max 112rpm
Having the Hrm tell me when i was going anaerobic was a big plus, i could say to myself okie ill do this but keep the time i'm in this zone down to something realistic then back off. As a result i arrived home at the end of the ride with a bit of zip left in the legs instead of my tongue dragging on the floor.
Got the first ride logged on the website and salted away and the coaching program on the web has scheduled a ride complete with hill intervals for tomorrow , 15 mins warmup at 50-60% then 1 hour at 70-80% with 3 minute power intervals uphill doing a cadence 50-60 followed by 7 mins recovery at 80 uphill or 100 downhill, repeat 4 times and then a 20 min cooldown ride 60-70%. I can see now where a wind trainer would come in handy, its going to be hard to find a bit of road that meets that profile!
First impressions were that the chest strap was quite comfortable and didn't move around at all for the duration of the ride. I had problems seeing most of the small stuff on the screen but the heart rate , cadence and speed were large enough to make out without needing to wear my reading glasses.
It was interesting to see how the daily ride stacked up when riding with the hrm. I set off leaving out the shorncliffe loop, thinking that i would ride normally and set the display to show % of max heart rate, the limits between 60% and 80% and keep an eye on it.
There was a stiff 8-12kph headwind for most of the ride to the nundah crit track so it was time to knuckle down and make the best of it.
Normally i would just go as quick as i could for as long as i could, recover a bit then pick up the pace again, but this ride the hrm kept saying "slow down!" . It was a task to keep it under the 80% and it was just too slow to even try for the 70% and maximize that fat burning zone so i placed my faith in the fact that I would burn more total calories.
Doing a standing sprint up the dump hill i hit my max hr for the ride of 95%, i felt that! . On shultzes canal I reverted to the normal ride style and found for most of the stretch i was hovering around the 85%, on the way back it was tail wind so i kept it at 80%, spinning up the dump hill this time it was 84% and averaged 74% through the windy bits in the wetlands.
Stats for the ride
Duration 1h 50 mins
Distance 41klm
Calories 1247
Hr max 95% - 165bpm
Hr avg 80% - 139bpm
Time in zone - 1hr 10 mins
Speed avg 27kph
Speed max 38kph
Cadence avg 87rpm
Cadence max 112rpm
Having the Hrm tell me when i was going anaerobic was a big plus, i could say to myself okie ill do this but keep the time i'm in this zone down to something realistic then back off. As a result i arrived home at the end of the ride with a bit of zip left in the legs instead of my tongue dragging on the floor.
Got the first ride logged on the website and salted away and the coaching program on the web has scheduled a ride complete with hill intervals for tomorrow , 15 mins warmup at 50-60% then 1 hour at 70-80% with 3 minute power intervals uphill doing a cadence 50-60 followed by 7 mins recovery at 80 uphill or 100 downhill, repeat 4 times and then a 20 min cooldown ride 60-70%. I can see now where a wind trainer would come in handy, its going to be hard to find a bit of road that meets that profile!