Can you help me understand the need for a heart rate monitor when I already have a power meter? Slightly better data?
Slightly more data. Whether it’s better data depends on what you do with it. Power is what you’re doing. HR is a physical response to what you’re doing, a lot of which relates to producing that power. I find that relationship and the things that affect it both interesting and useful but that’s why I need an HRM, not why you do. But I would ask “why not?”.
Here’s a coaches article on HR with lots of useful info Heart Rate: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask – The Sufferfest
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The ^ coaches article has a bunch of good info.
There are some really interesting things you can measure with only HR and only with both HR and power. Two HR-related metrics I particularly like to track to understand my body are heart rate recovery (Toolbox: Heart Rate Recovery - PezCycling News) and aerobic drift/decoupling (Alan Couzens: The Science of Decoupling).
The former is useful to understand how quickly I can recover from hard efforts, which isn’t something power can tell me at all. The latter is useful to understand my progression on endurance efforts.
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Thank you for the replies.
I am just being cheap I guess…I will get the Wahoo armband one as it seems to be a favorite instead of the chest strap ones.
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The chest straps will likely be a bit more accurate.
With all we spend on bikes, trainers, gear, nutrition, etc., it seems like a good HRM is a minimal expense.
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Thank you
I got the POWR LABS hem from Amazon. Works perfectly with the SUF app. Cheap too! I am no expert but over the years find it tells a lot. It’s not just how fast it goes up but also how fast it comes down
So I bought a Wahoo Tickr.
Yeah, good call…I like the data and think it will be very beneficial in my training.
Thanks to all who replied.
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