My Polar heart rate monitor – Why you should have one

If you run five to six times a week, go to work by bike and do strength training in between your running days, you don’t want to spend more time than absolutely necessary at the PC writing all the stuff down. At the same time, it is important to see and calculate progress (or plateauing).

I got the RS300 Polar heart rate monitor to keep track of the kilometers I ran and to see my pace while I am running. After the training sessions, you can see your average and max pace, heart-rate and which sport-zones you used (customizable heart-rate zones). It even has a function that can measure your current fitness level (it’s called OwnIndex and is correlated to your VO2max) and another test that determines your current aerobic zone in the first minutes of your particular run! Two really cool features!

When you start running, as I did about three years ago, you’ll be overwhelmed by numbers. Same goes for other (endurance) sports. So, if you are like me, you start tracking what you can measure – the data will useful for motivation, new training plans, calculating your training load and much more.

At first you want to know how much time you spend on the track. Then you will start measuring your track length and calculating your pace. Soon enough, you buy a heart rate monitor to ensure the right training load and you begin training pulse oriented.

If its not enough to write that all down, maybe you want to see an average displayed by week/month/year in fancy, colored graphs, ready to share online with your training partners. Your personal Nyan Cat of data, there you go, the RS300 helps you do just that. Go to the website polar offers you to keep track of your personal goals, trainings plans and much more. Sure, I hear from time to time that people „feel“ how much load they take, they „sometimes run fast, other times slower and it works well“.

Yes, it is much better than watching TV. Now consider the following: maybe you want to go faster and farther and run more relaxed all at the same time, get the lost calories counted and do it in perfect alignment with your body – then, of course, get yourself a heart-rate watch. Even with half-hearted endurance ambitions, monitor your heart. (And get a training plan of course, or let the Polar software design one for you based on your fitness test – well done Polar, well done).

Do you already own a heart-rate monitor? Have different ways to stay in touch with your training load? Share your knowledge, write a comment.