Garmin vs Polar Heart Rate Straps

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!

Building a New Bike - Part 2 - The Build

In a previous post I discussed the new Scott CR1 Pro frame I had bought with the objective of moving the components across from my Focus to the Scott. I have now completed this successfully. This post is a report of the whole process.

I'll document some more details in another post - this is mainly just photos showing it going together. For example in other posts I have commented on the high shift load for the Shimano 5700 front dérailleur and this will be covered in the next post (here).

Firstly of course firstly I needed to get the frame:

It came within a few days well packed

The frame and fork unpacked

The Frame with the protection still in place

Frame and fork

Frame and fork

As I wrote in the first post Cult Cycles fitted the headset and cut the fork for me. I then went on holiday for a week so the frame sat in the loft. I knew I needed some additional parts so I ordered these from Wiggle at the end of the holiday for delivery in the week I came back.

The first main activity was to strip all the parts off the Focus and clean them thoroughly. I also weighed them reasonably carefully (see here). However the cheap digital scales:

I used seem a bit inconsistent and I don't fully trust them. It's easy to re-weigh the same parts and get different results. The resolution is also on 0.01kg so not great discrimination for some of the lighter parts.

It took 2-3 evenings to strip the parts from the Focus and clean them, before I started on the build of Scott. Here's the build at a very early stage:

The frame in my Park Work Stand with seat tube fitted to given some strength to the seat tube. The stem is a temporary part to hold the fork in place

Before any parts fitted (with the recycling bag in the background)

With the correct stem, handlebars and shifters fitted. Also front and rear brake calipers and front and rear dérailleurs and chainset. The cable outers are still connected to the shifters to give an indication of length.

Front on view

The wheels are now fitted

Almost finished. Chain fitted. All cables installed. Gears indexed. Brakes adjusted. Bar tape fitted

I fitted an in-line cable adjuster for the front deraillieur given the issues I had with the front mech on the Focus

Cable outer length might need a little optimisation

The drive train

The massive seat stay/seat tube interface

Detail of the front of the bike

Finished

The massive bottom bracket area

Total build time - about 6 hours over 2 evenings and a Saturday morning.

Col de Box Hill - Saturday 25 May 2013

Box Hill - it is spoken with reverence and hallowed tones amongst the cycling fraternity. The long, almost Alpine like ascent, the sheer level of ascent, the views, a challenge so tough that it struck fear into the Olympic Road Race participants. Its been called the Alpe d'Huez of the South even. Given this description I felt that when an opportunity arose to take on this immense challenge that I just could not turn it down.

And its climb #14 in 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs - I have not done many of the climbs in this book (I have done #1 - Cheddar Gorge (Wiggle Mendips Sportive in 2011), #98 - Rhigos and #99 The Bwlch - although not quite all of it! Both of the latter were on the 2010 Dragon Ride). The book says that the surface was not great but as part of the "Olympic Legacy" for me the surface was absolutely fantastic - clearly resurfaced only for the race. The other roads that I rode in the vicinity were pretty normal - i.e. average to dreadful!

I was taking my wife down to visit some of her family and also to visit a joint friend of ours who I went to university with and was my best man. From the Midlands the route to Sussex is M40, M25 and A24 and Box Hill sits just on the A24 so an opportunity too good to miss. I put the bike in the car and we headed off. The M40 was as normal no issue but the M25 was its typical pain taking us an hour to get from the M40 junction round to the A24 exit. This put us a little behind schedule. We managed to park at the Rykers Cafe at the bottom and after a quick change and minor re-assembly of the bike off I went. Some pre-checking of segments around Box Hill had shown there was a loop of about 8 miles that would avoid just hill reps and see a little more of Surrey - this is this segment: BoxHill Ballbreaker. I planned to ride this loop twice and do a 3rd final climb and then turn around giving me about 18-19 miles and 3 ascents in about 1 hour - after all my wife would be sitting in the car at the cafe so I could not and did not want too spend too long. I also programmed the route (1 loop) into my Garmin so I could just ride and not bother about trying to navigate

The main problem with the route was that Rykers Cafe is literally 100-200 metres from the start of Zig Zag Road which is the Box Hill climb so I knew that I had to be sensible on the first climb and not blow up through being completely cold and with no warm up. I did cycle down to the A24 from the car park exit to add in about 200 more meters but there was no way that this would be anything like enough to warm up properly, so was in the little front ring from the word go.

Turning onto Zig Zag road was a little exciting - I recognised lots of bits from the Olympic coverage and it was full of cyclists. For that first climb it was difficult to know quite what gear to be in. My legs felt fresh and felt like I needed a higher gear, but I resisted and stayed in 34-19 for the run to the first hairpin. Up to the first bend its mostly straight but there are some very small curves of a few degrees from the straight ahead and the gradient is reasonably flat, with a slight kick up to the first bend. The first bend is quite wide and easy to negotiate - its not really a hairpin at all. There is then a short straight section with an almost constant gradient to the second hairpin which really is a hairpin - very tight and with a noticeable height change across the corner. This is followed by another straight of constant gradient until a final 90degree right turn and short (100-200m) climb to the cafe at top. And that's it.

1.6 miles long, 410 feet of ascent and an average grade of 5%. Its only 3/10 in the 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs.

The first climb I did in 8:01, the second in 7:50 and the final one in 7:58. Disappointing that there was not a bigger improvement from the first climb but re-assuringly consistent. What is absurd that in this shot ride I got 55 achievements! For Box Hill alone there are about a dozen segments at least! And the number of riders is amazing compared to where I normally ride.

This Segment has 9017 riders and has been ridden 49551 times. I came 2709th.
This Segment has 8085 riders and has been ridden 39818 times. I came 1647th.

Here is the Strava elevation profile for my ride showing that it is made up of 98% segments:

And so it goes on.

For me I was pleased to be in the top 1/3rd to top 1/4. This is about the best I could hope for. I would have been disappointed to be in the lower half.

On the day I rode no one passed be on any of the 3 climbs and I passed a reasonable number of people.

I mentioned the sheer number of people riding the segments compared to in the Midlands. There were literally hundreds of people going up, coming down or sitting at the Cafes at the top and bottom. It was like riding a sportive with so many people about. A lot of people looked like they had ridden down from London or up from Surrey and Sussex. I may have had an advantage on my climbs with hardly any miles in my legs compared to some of these people to be fair.

I spent a lot of the space above talking about Box Hill but the loop around from the top back to the bottom of Zig Zag road was equally pleasant - and there were hardly any other cyclists here - they obviously mostly only come to ride the hill itself but I fully recommend the loop that I rode (it was not the Olympic route though)

Here are some pictures of Box Hill from other peoples pages.

First Hairpin

The Second hairpin

The Long Straight (looking down)

The Long Straight (looking up) with the fresh graffiti

The picture showing the writing on the road - there was lots of support for Mark Cavendish shows it freshly painted but it is all still readable. It was quite exciting!

Near Miss - GP400s Damage

A couple of weeks ago I was idly checking my Focus before I went for a ride and spotted this in the rear tyre:

I was lucky - this would have been a ride stopping failure if it had got any worse on the road. The cut was about 10-12mm long and had penetrated through completely for about 1mm. However the inner tube was OK. I ordered a new tyre from Wiggle and all was well.

I was a bit annoyed - it had only been on a year and done about 3500 miles with plenty of life left (although there was a noticeable flat band on the centre of the tyre). Other riders may get less life being heavier or more powerful. The front tyre is almost as good as new although there are small nicks here and there.

UK Riding

This site: http://www.jonathanokeeffe.com/strava/map.php allows you to plot all your routes uploaded to Strava and see where you have ridden. Its great. Here is my ride data since 1 Jan 2011:

As you can see they are centered around the south West Midlands, but I have also ridden:
Dartford (Kent, parents house), Exeter (son's university), Sheffield (other son's university), Bath/Mendips (Wiggle Sportive), Stoke on Trent (Tour of Britain Sportive), Cardiff (prospective university), the Wiggle No Excuses Sportive and a Birmingham to Oxford ride.

I have ridden in France and recorded the rides on my Nokia using Nokia Sportstracker but I didn't keep the original data, so I have lost speed etc and can't upload these rides to Strava.

However I did upload them to Google Earth:

These are all the rides from mid 2009 to about November 2010. These show riding in Normandy and the Isle de Paris, the 2010 Dragon Ride (Medio route) and the 2010 Tour Ride Stoke. I also rode from Solihull to Milton Keynes one day - my sons went snowboarding so I rode down.

Garmin Heart Rate Monitor

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

Update 4-June-2012

Weather was better so took the opportunity for a ride on the Monday.

The wind was blowing to the West so I made a bit of an effort on the "Leg Sapper" segment and got to 8th position with a PR and a time of 2:19 against the previous best of 2:28, equivalent to 1mph faster. This moved me from about 19th to 8th. I was pleased with this.

Took in a climb of Rose Hill - it felt painful but got another PR of 3:37 vs. 3:41 from March earlier this year and moving me from 20th to 18th.

After Rose Hill took my normal route round to Tardebigge as the intention was to have a ride of Unicorn Hill and Prospect Hill in Redditch to see if I could eat into Dave's times. I was not really sure where exactly I was going and spent a long time looping back on myself to get to the town centre. Finally I got there and came upon Unicorn Hill rather quickly. I recognised it from the Halfords Tour Series on the TV a few weeks ago and having had a look at the map the day before, but it came up a bit quick and I fumbled the gears to drop to the small ring. It was not too bad and I was treating it as a bit of a sighter ride for a better attempt later. I then went down Prospect Hill (its actually a One Way road) and went all the way to the traffic lights at the bottom and turned around to come back up as I was not sure exactly where it started from. Again I treated it as a bit of a sighter ride and while didn't loaf I didn't give it the beans either. Swung left at the top and rode in what I though was the direction of Beoley.

It all went a bit wrong here as Redditch seems to be lots of areas (housing and industrial) only linked by busy (bike unfriendly) dual carriageways. The long and the short of it was a long looping ride round Redditch before finally recognising something I'd seen before and getting to Beoley. I went home via Icknield Street, but again with no real segment hunting aim. 

More importantly was that on Unicorn Hill I was only 3 seconds behind Dave at 28 (vs 25) seconds and only 1 place in 15th position. That 3 secs should be easy especially if I can approach it better next time. The other reason for trying Unicorn Hill is that it is a direct comparison with some Pro cyclists. The top 7 times were all set during the Tour Series Race and the KOM is Dean Downing who set a time of 13secs - over twice as fast as my time - and he rode up at 28.6mph! That's why they're Pros I guess.

On Prospect Hill on the 1st attempt I was in a strong 4th place at 1:07 although a long time behind Dave's KOM time of  0:49. That will need some real effort.

There were also quite a few other segments in Redditch that I rode without realising and now I know where they are I'll definitely have a go for them. The only problem is trying to get back out of Redditch!

Total ride distance was 56miles in 3:19:18 giving an average of 16.8mph and the total climbing was 2989ft. I probably could have made a slight improvement if I'd known where I was going in Redditch but my legs did feel quite tired for some reason

As an observation the horrible noises from the Focus FSA Mega EXO BB have gone at the moment - I haven't done anything. Hopefully a replacement is on the way from Wiggle so we'll see what happens. I'll be riding ~80 miles next weekend on the Pedal for Parkinsons ride so I hope it is OK.

Update 10.00pm: Dave's been out to have another go at the Unicorn Hill segment and gained 8 seconds - not so sure I can catch that, but I am flattered that he thought I'd pass his previous time and needed/wanted to post a faster time!
Also went out with my wife this evening after dinner and rode (her on the BSO and me on my Mongoose) another 9 miles. I am only 21 miles from reaching the 1/2 way point of the 2012 mileage target, and hopefully will run this off tomorrow.

End of May Summary and Mega EXO Moans

Update 1 June 2012

After the Wheel Heroes ride last Sunday I continued to take advantage of the good weather and rode to work on both Tuesday and Thursday.

I was initially tired starting out on Tuesday morning and made it in just over an hour. On the way home managed some reasonably good times and got a PR on the Hampton in Arden Hill Climb. Each ride I seem to be able to edge a second or so.

On the Thursday ride I had a target of a new segment that I'd spotted on one of Mike Harrison's rides - Hampton Hill which runs up past Solihull Grammar School. It is just a short segment - KOM was held by Scott Wharton at 0:56 and my previous best was 1:06. The segment is about 3 miles from home and I was warmed up by the start and really went for it. The outcome was the KOM at 0:53 so a good result. I also got 2nd best time on cornets end/back lane. There are now 9 segments on the commute in.

This KOM got me back up to 5 segments - better than nothing!

For May got almost 600 miles and an above target which is good, but the weather for the long Bank Holiday weekend looks uninspiring though.

An activity over the next week is to assess the state of the BB on my Focus. I've returned the unit to Wiggle as its less than a year old (and only about 3000 miles). Hopefully I'll get a replacement although as this is the 2nd failed unit it appears that this is about how long they last. It's a FSA BB-6000 Gossamer Mega EXO Bottom Bracket - and gets mixed reviews regarding durability from the Wiggle customers that have bought one on the past.

I think when the rest of the chain set needs replacement I'd be unwilling to replace it with another FAS (or even renew the chain rings if the BB itself lasts about a year and costs £40 a time to replace

Bike Upgrade Summary 2012

From the 2 posts below I have made a brief reference to some potential benefits of upgrading the wheels on my Focus.

I bought a Focus Cayo 105 from Wiggle at the start of 2010 as an upgrade from my 2009 Giant Defy 4. The Focus is a really good entry level Carbon bike and was a big upgrade from my Defy. I didn't spend any money on the Cayo in 2010, riding it as delivered. In 2011 I fitted a Short Cage 105 rear dérailleur for cosmetic reasons only and changed the tyres. However in 2012 I was looking for some bigger improvement and decided that some wheels would make an improvement. I spent some time looking at what was a sensible upgrade - looking at cost, weight, and other factors. After a lot of review I selected some Shimano RS80 C24 wheels (here).

Noel already had a pair and they seemed really good, plus everywhere I looked the reviews were pretty well overwhelmingly positive.

I also got some Continental GP4000s tyres (here).

This combination seemed to make a real difference the first time I road the bike, but it has been over the past couple of months (March April 2012) when I have put more miles on them that I do believe that they have made a big difference, especially when climbing, but also on the flat - it seems easier to accelerate up to a cruising speed and up hill I seem to be a gear higher than previously.

In terms of overall weight these wheels are light (~1550g for the pair) and the wheels that came with the Cayo originally (Cole Rollen) were not bad (~1750g for the pair) so although there is only a small weight loss the 'feel' of the wheels and the performance gain seems significantly more than 250g worth of improvement.

So would I recommend the Shimano wheels - definitely yes