Polar S625x - a data geek's dream!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2007

This past summer I puchased a Polar S625x monitor, but have been so busy since that I have not ventured beyond just using it to record my workouts in a basic way. This morning my running partners were all out of town (one running the U.S. National X-C masters race in Boulder!), so I took the time to program the monitor to see what I could do.

I was pleased to see how from my PC I could set up the workout exactly how Coach Spivey had written it: 20 minute warm-up, 14 X :45 second intervals with 1:00 minute recovery, with my intervals only up to threshold heart rate, and then 8 minute warm down. Oh yeah, I also broke out the foot pod unit, put the battery in, turned it on, and hoped to see distance recorded (however inaccurately since I had not calibrated it).

At 10 degrees f it was a whole lot warmer than last Sunday when I ran 12 miles at -10 f with 26 mph wind. I was plenty warm in the sun. And my monitor fed me my workout perfectly. I ran a course I know so well that what was to be a timed 52:30 wound up at 53:17 from my house and back again. I hit my intervals in my target HR zone and my warm-up and recovery were likewise in my zones.

The only disappointment is that I recorded no distance (even though I know perfectly what distance I ran - 5.85 miles - having run the course and variants of it for 17 years). I am a typical male - who needs to read the manual? I can figure it out! Clearly, I need to read the manual so next time out I get distance. There will be courses in the future for which I don't know the distance, where distance measurement will be helpful.

Beyond that, I now plan to order the added bike peripherals so I can get cadence and power.

What more could a data geek want?