Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
That said, it is a very good idea to be able to track your effort on the bike, which a heart rate monitor (HRM) does very well.
I have a chest strap HRM -- the Polar H10. I just use it with Polar Beat on my phone, which also gets GPS data, though my phone's GPS seems to often be a little noisy. When I ride I just start the tracking and stick my phone in my pocket; I currently have no practical way to actually look at any of this information unless I'm stopped.
Got it back in 2020 to measure heart rate on foot. It works great! I know it's accurate because it has an (apparently archaic) 5 kHz broadcast option for sending HR to gym equipment and my earbuds are cheap and poorly shielded against interference. The upshot is that if I unplug my earbuds and coil the wire around the HRM while I'm wearing it, I can hear a quiet chirp (at just about 5 kHz!) every time my heart beats.
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Doesn't much matter on rides of under 50 miles though.
I've bonked after just 15 miles... to be fair I hadn't eaten in 24 hours. I was feeling great until I suddenly wasn't! My heart rate dropped from 190 to 140 and pushing harder made me feel like I was gonna pass out. I figure I ran out of stores and my blood glucose tanked. Felt awesome after getting home and eating starch.
Originally Posted by
chaadster
So, if going all in at once isn’t a possibility, the first thing to get is a GPS head unit.
A bike computer also seems like a prerequisite to get good use out of meters, so I guess I'll be looking into one of these instead. I read that there are head units that the user can program with a route and which will give cues for route-following. That would be a significant improvement for me when I go places I haven't gone before! My current approach is to stop and fish my phone out of my pocket when I need to figure out where I am.
Originally Posted by
john m flores
I'd love a power meter just to see how paltry my watts/kg is compared to the pros. I did the math once and it was laughable.
In February or so I found a power-measuring stationary bike at a gym and tested out what 100/200/300 watts feels like. My sprint (pushing into what felt like a wall, 100 rpm, sustained for like 30 seconds, but in the saddle) is apparently 250 watts, which I am given to believe is lower than a fairly normal serious cyclist's FTP. Just given how much faster I've gotten since then, I am sure the numbers are better now, but I'm also sure they are still laughable!