I bought a heart rate monitor yesterday. I hemmed and hawed for a few days trying to decide which model to buy. There are some many different models each with a ton of features and it seems that no one HR monitor, apart from the super expensive ones, has all the right features I desired. At first I though the F6 was the model. It seemed to have everything I wanted. In reality, all I should have really needed was one that measured my heart rate. Wasn’t that the point? Anyway, I then saw the F11 which was a few bob more, but contained a few more features I felt might be useful. Ah, but then I saw the S625 which has a GPS unit in it and can therefore tell me how far and what rate I run. Now that would be a handy feature because quite often, I go out for a run and only have an estimated distance in my head, plus I spend a lot of time working away from home base and so planning a route in a foreign place is not always feasible beforehand. The trouble with the S625 is that it costs £208!!! I just couldn’t justify spending that kind of money on a watch that measures your heart rate.

In the end, I decided to buy the F11. Now I had to decide where to buy the thing. JJB sports wanted £99, a shop on the internet wanted, £83.95. As always, I wanted the HR monitor right then and didn’t want to wait a week of more for it to come through the post, after all I have training to do. So I had resigned myself to forking out the extra cash and buying it from JJB. But low and behold, as I was driving by the Southam Leisure Centre, I had a sudden urge to go inside and see if by some chance they sold them. I did a quick u-turn, ran inside, and sure enough they did sell them, and for cheaper than any of the other places. They wanted only £75 for it. Bargain. In the transaction, I did get to see that the unit cost is £59. So JJB Sports is making a mint on theirs.

Anyway I have myself a heart rate monitor and I’m happy with the purchase so far. I measured my fitness level and it turns out I’m only moderately fit with an OwnIndex of 43. The OwnIndex is apparently equivalent to VO2max which is a measure of aerobic fitness.

Later today I’ll get to train with the F11 and see whether I’ve been training to hard or if I’ve been dogging it.