No Data

I lost my heart rate monitor over the weekend. Very annoying. The lack of data is doing my head in.

Obviously I ordered a new one the moment I realised that I had lost my old one, but it is taking its sweet time in arriving (okay 4 days so far, but c'mon). I have to say I am struggling with the lack of data.

I am a big believer in every session having a purpose, a point. That point may be long and steady, it might be short and intense intervals, but all the sessions have a focus. Obviously you can judge that intent using perceived effort, plenty of people did that for a lot of years before Garmins came along. Over the years I have come to realise that perceived effort isn't for me though, for me I want numbers, cold hard data. The data helps me really make sure that I am pinpointing exactly the intensity that I want for a particular session. In this way the data helps me maximise the effectiveness of each of the sessions.

I have a Garmin 935, which like most Garmins these days measures heart rate at my wrist, but I have to say that for most of my activities that just doesn't seem to cut it for accuracy. Running seems okay, but most of activities it seems to struggle with. No for me I just want a nice simple, reliable heart rate monitor. Doesn't seem like much to ask.

Some of my training this week has been fine without the heart rate monitor, cycling I have my power meter so that is all good, but for a lot of my sessions the heart rate monitor features pretty strongly. Without that data I have felt a bit like a rudderless ship.

With any luck my heart rate monitor will turn up any day soon and that will be that. Until then though I guess I will be making do with judging effort on how I feel, and getting frustrated about it.