Thursday, 2 April 2015

Testing the Lidl HRM belt on a 5K circuit.

Hmm.
I tested the Lidl "Medisana" HRM belt again, this time with the LG L50 'phone.
Here is the run, as recorded by Strava.

I started off real slow, down and round and up the first "Cleveland Climb", then picked up the pace to what felt like maybe 140 bpm (I was a bit breathless, but not exactly gasping!), then round like this until the last lap, when I sprinted along the flat at the bottom, and up the hill. I actually stopped before the top of the hill, I was running that hard, just to see how high the hrm numbers would go.

Turns out I set a "Course Record" for that climb (it only goes half-way up the hill!), and knocked 9 seconds off my previous PR.

Just from the "feel", the HRM seemed to be recording 5 to 10 bpm on the "high" side. I even stopped a couple of times to do a manual "pulse" check (the "old" way with a wristwatch), and I didn't quite get such a high number - but then again, by the time I had actually found my pulse and taken the measurement, my pulse had probably dropped a bit anyway!

So, I recorded a "high" of 181bpm on the uphill sprint - I had the familiar "burn" feeling in my chest, and my I was sweating like crazy for a while afterwards.

Conclusions:
Either the HRM belt reads a little high (but it seemed to do alright on the previous tests), or my true Max Heart Rate is a bit higher than I guessed - nearer to the top of the range for a chap of 50 like me.
So given that I got a 181bpm max from the belt (and I was going flat out at the time!), I think I need to revise my HRmax up to 181 and recalculate my training zones from that!

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