I first got a heart rate strap when I bought my Garmin 800 bundle a number of years ago. It was quite interesting to get a measure of "actual" effort vs. perceived effort and I wore it for every ride for interest reasons - although I never trained to it.
Garmin Strap (with transmitter):
However it was about 8 months later that the readings started to get a bit erratic. I wrote about it here: http://midlandscyclist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/garmin-heart-rate-monitor.html
In fact with the last strap I referred to in the above post I stopped wearing it for a while and then would only wear it for a "more interesting" ride. I effectively stopped using it other than on the off-chance it would be reliable, and it was for a while. Often moistening the contact patches would help before putting it on. However it eventually got less and less useful and was hardly worth wearing. At over £30 it was to expensive to keep replacing for just over a years use.
However my son came back for vacation from university and he had bought a Polar Strap. These were apparently fully compatible and a fraction of the price
Polar Strap:
Its (as of August 2015) £10-12 from Amazon so about 1/3rd of the price. So I ordered one - from Wiggle in this case for £12.30 in a M-XXL size. It arrived promptly as always and I went to fit it.
This is where the only problem arose. It's not clear from the photos but in fact around the popper is a rubber collar. I assume that this is to form a water proof seal around the contacts on the transmitter unit. No matter how I tried I could not get the transmitter to fit so I had two choices - return the strap or "modify" it. For £12 I decided that I would trim the rubber collar back so that the transmitter would fit, so carefully, with a new and hence super sharp Stanley blade, trimmed about 2mm off the collar.
Here are the bits I trimmed off:
The result was that the transmitter then fitted perfectly. Since then I have worn the strap for all rides expect commutes and it has worked faultlessly in every circumstance. It has been absolutely drenched in sweat when I was in the French Alps and never had any issue. This is what I would have expected the Garmin strap to deliver - but in this case Garmin won't get any more of my money for a HR strap.
As a side note I read on a forum that sometimes Garmin straps can be made to work again but cutting a 5mm or so strip out of the strap between the poppers. I have not tried this through!
Today was the last day of my extended (2 week) Christmas 2014 holiday. I wanted to get out for a short ride but the weather forecast the night before suggested frost, so I played it by ear to see what it was like when I woke up. However I had planned ahead and decided that I'd ride over to Rose Hill (or Bilberry Hill as its also known) in the Lickey Hills and do some Hill repeats. The main reason for this was that if it were icy the route over was a bus route so should be reasonably ice free and also its not too far to go. Rose Hill is also a reasonably tough climb (especially in the winter) and although not overly long it's one of those hills that gets steeper as you get closer to the top. Its about 12-13% at the steepest.
I also, completely on a whim decided to wear my Garmin Heart Rate monitor the first time for a long time - I'd given up on it again as it was getting very erratic the last few times I'd worn it much earlier in 2014 - I wrote about some of the issues in this post. Certainly when I first put it on it read 64bpm - I am fit but not that fit.
I had to spend about 5 minutes refitting my front mudguard as I'd removed it to bring my bike back from Dartford where we'd been for a week over the Christmas holiday. It does not fit that well when on the Thule 561 rack - the Crud Roadracer mudguards only take a few minutes to remove so its not an issue. It also took a further few minutes to finally get ready to start and it seemed that this 10-15 minutes helped the strap to read a more sensible value.
It was bitterly cold when I set off but the main roads seemed to be reasonably ice free for the first 5 miles or so. However as I got to the top of Groveley Lane I saw some ice and slush on the road which I managed to avoid but the road was very slippery. I then saw just ahead 3 cyclists waving me down - it appeared that it was so icy that at least one of them had fallen off. I dithered for a minute or so but decided to continue but got off the bike and walked down pavement about 1/4 mile to the railway bridge where the road was OK again. I am not sure why that particular bit of road was so icy though.
From there it was just another mile or so to the bottom of Rose Hill. I dropped onto the 34 inner ring at the roundabout to start spinning up from the very beginning and did the first ascent. It didn't feel too bad at all although I was not trying. The lowest gear I used was the 34-24 (2nd) and rolled up reasonably comfortably. I turned around at the top and mostly free wheeled to the bottom, mindful of potential ice patches. The 2nd and 3rd climbs were also pretty easy, but I was starting to feel it by the 4th. However as I hadn't been lower than the 34-24 gear for all climbs felt I could easily complete a 5th climb. On the last ascent I did use the lowest gear (34-28) but just to be lazy - I could have done it in the 34-24 again but didn't bother.
Once at the bottom for the last time I was originally going to head back the same way I rode over as its quite rolling and as a result its feasible to get over 100ft/mile of ascent. However given the ice on Groveley Lane I rode back via the Bristol Road South to Northfield, then Cotteridge/Kings Norton (past the house in Middleton Hall Road that I lived in for 2 years as a student at Birmingham University), Kings Heath and Yardley Wood.
The new 2015 Strava Segments feature meant that again I picked up lots of 2015 KOM and top 10 placings being one of only a few riders to have ventured out early enough in the year!
Here's the route:
Here's a better picture of the elevation courtesy of Veloviewer:
The actual ride was 94ft/mile which is pretty impressive for this non-hilly urban area of South Birmingham.
Here's some more data from Veloviewer:
Looking at the HR data I am not sure it was working properly for the 1st 1/2 hour. I am fit but not fit enough to keep my HR below 100 - I think once it shows above 130 it was OK. Its also interesting to see where I stopped and walked down Groveley Lane which I have circled in red. Also the max HR at the top of the climb was a consistent 165-169bpm - so I was not working flat out but kept the effort even. I don't trust it to be reliable over a whole ride but it performed better than it had last time - so I might start using it again a bit more often for more challenging rides.
Given that the strap itself costs around £35 I can't justify buying another unless I want to start training a bit more specifically.
I have had my Garmin 800 for some time now - just about over 2 years I think. In that time I have had the first heart rate monitor swapped under warranty and now the replacement one has failed in the same way. Its not that it doesn't work, it's just that it doesn't work "properly". The failure seems to occur after about 8 months of use (or at least 8 months of my use which is 4-5 rides per week and 60-100 miles/week). Both straps have failed after this time.
This is the strap and transmitter:
There are 3 main failure modes:
1) it doesn't read anything (although the main unit acknowledges the presence of the HRM)
2) it will sort of read something but only very low values, suggesting that I am an elite athlete cycling 50 miles barely breaking 90bpm, or
3) it reads mega high (>200bpm) suggesting I should be dead!
Here is an example of a typical failure mode:
And here is a "proper" trace over a similar route (approx 29 miles at about 17.0-17.5mph average speed):
This is much more realistic at a typical average of about 150bpm with short excursions to 170bpm maximum).
Now I don't need a HRM and I don't use it for training or anything like that, but I like to look at the data and see how hard I was actually working vs. how hard I felt I was working. And also having got one I'd like it to be working.
So back to the first HRM. Having bought the Garmin 800 from good old Wiggle, I sent it in for a swap, and for whatever faults others think Wiggle have, their returns and warranty policy and support is second to none (PC World take note), and they replaced the HRM - both the strap and transmitter unit without quibble.
Off I rode for another 8 months or so and then the symptoms occur again. Its really irritating as the HRM is about £35-£45 a time. Its the strap that fails not the transmitter unit. I am wondering whether its possible to cobble up some sort of repair by replacing the contact patches with another conductive material and actually wire up a conductor to the poppers for the transmitter unit. That's a dark winter's evening project I think.
A search of the internet reveals that my issue is not uncommon. Some suggestions are to use the Polar WearLink+ strap but I have no other evidence to support this. There is seemingly a maintenance process to follow to wash the strap which I did use for the 2nd unit but did not add anything to the life of the strap
What is worse is that when it works it works really well and is very comfortable to wear. Even worse is that Garmin don't just sell that strap alone, you have to buy the strap and transmitter increasing the cost significantly.
Come on Garmin - either get the strap to last or sell it on its own
