"At this moment I wanted to do a Hulk-like shirt ripping and tearing the HRM chest strap off of my body, slamming it on the floor and destroying it Office Space-style."
(excerpt from my 05/11/10 Training Log)
My first HRM was a basic Polar. However, over time, I've abused it, the battery eventually died, and I was lured by the promises of a brand new shiny New Balance "N3 Mini Heart Rate Monitor" for a bargain clearance price of $40. It was basic but included HR-based calorie calculation, and that's all I needed.
First thing I did was lose the manual, which I realized as soon as I tried to use the watch. It is an non-intuitive as organic chemistry (actually... well.. but I am a nerd, and a chemical engineer). Not only could I not figure out how to input my data (weight, age, etc), but I couldn't even understand how to get the watch to show the amount of calories burned.
The second adventure was finding the manual online. N3 is only branded by New Balance, but is manufactured by someone else (at this point I forgot who). Therefore New Balance offers no support for this product whatsoever. Eventually I was able to discover this gem in the depth of the intranets (if you need it - let me know).
Inputting my data was a blast! <<sarcasm alert>> Weight starts at 160 lbs and ramps up to something like 850lbs, there is no "reverse" button of course. So I had to go alllllllllll the way through the cycle... and when you finger is numb from holding the button for the past 10 minutes... oops.. I accidentally passed my mark. Here we go again! YAY!
And then, it was finally ready for me and I was ready for it. 60-minutes of hardcore Kickbox-Jam cardio.. oh? I burned only 280 calories? are you serious?? The calorie calculation on the N3 is way off. At first I was skeptical - well, I am comparing to my old polar where I would burn at least 500 kcal during an hour-long cardio class. But checking with the simple calculators (weight x time x effort ..), or actually just with the prediction on the gym treadmill based on my weight - I new the New Balance was wrong.
The reason may have been the terrible chest strap quality. HRM straps slip and slide once in a while, but I rarely had problems with the Polar, as long as it as tucked under my sports bra it would detect an accurate reading about 95% of the time. New Balance was great at keeping my mind off of the strenuous exercises by focusing all of my attention on just trying to get a reading off of the damn thing. It doesn't detect HR until I work up a sweat (water doesn't work) and before I work up a lot of sweat.... so during about a 10-minute window after warm-up.
"Today I wanted to do a max-heart rate test. I got a lot of rest, I had my HRM, I had my mp3 player, and I was feeling great after the first warm-up mile..... and then I realized that my treadmill was reading my neighbor's heart rate, not mine. In fact, my HRM was flashing zero."
Hopefully I can revive my old Polar, but N3 is definitely going in the trash.
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