I’m about ready to give up on the heart belt. I have not had a decent reading in a while and I’m doing everything by the book. I’m looking at 2 options:
- First, there is an electrode gel called Bah-bump heart rate monitor electrode cream that apparently works really well. It is an inexpensive solution that I don’t mind investing a few bucks on.
- Second, there is a new product in the market that is getting mixed reviews. The Mio Alpha is a wrist watch that doesn’t need a heart belt; instead it has two light beams (green) that constantly probe your blood flow to detect your heart beat. There are two problems. One, apparently it is not too accurate when you sweat a lot (and I do) and two, it is not ANT+ compatible; hence it doesn’t sync up to my Garmin 910XT. Besides, at a couple of hundred bucks, it is not exactly cheap! The idea of wearing two monitors (one for heart rate and one for everything else) is not appealing either. It is a pretty sleek, sexy looking product though that I could get just as a plain old wrist watch (yes, it can tell time too)!
Anyway, today I went to Lifetime Fitness and did a pretty hard run for an hour (more than 7.8 miles) followed by an hour-long spin on the bike. Overall, it was a pretty hard effort. As you can see (if you click these links), my heart rate is all over the place!
My lower back has picked up a slight kink since this morning, but it is pretty minor and didn’t prevent me from running or spinning today. I’ll watch it closely though!