I'm looking for a heartbeat

Don Johnson "Heartbeat" (1986)



 I have been looking for months now trying to find a heart rate monitor so I can see why I am the slowest sugar diabetic runner on the planet.  The more I run the slower I go?  How is this possible?  So I thought to do a little research and wanted to see what my heart rate was during my run so I could adjust from there.

 The first thing was to figure out what I wanted in this device.  Of course I wanted a heart rate monitor and the time then I thought hey what about GPS with a down loadable route with speed?  Then I went to the store and all of those came off the table because they wanted at least 400 bucks for something with all those features.  Then I adjusted my wants and needs list and decided to just find a heart rate watch that did not require a chest strap.  Someone once told me the straps can chafe you in the wrong places.  Then while surfing eBay one day I found the unit you see in these pictures that was a watch, stop watch, calorie calculator, and of course a heart rate monitor.  The price was 6.99 with shipping included and I was so happy because how hard is it for a company to make a heart rate monitor?  All they had to do is install two fingers that count the pounds and puts it on the screen.

 The watch arrived on Saturday and it was like super good plastic and high quality for a 6.99 watch with six functions.  I instantly put it on and started reading the instructions and the first let down happened at that time.  The watch does not do constant heart rate monitoring but you go to the function on the watch and put your finger on this red dot on the side that gets your heart rate but that is it.  So I thought OK not what I wanted but this would make a good camping watch so I could stop at any time and take my heart rate to see how I am doing and it told the time so how bad could that be?

How bad could that be?  Well it turned out to be pretty bad because on Sunday I participated in a "Tour de Cure" training ride coming up in Dallas in two weeks and thought this would be a great time to at least try out my monitor to see how well it could do.  In my head I was thinking how inaccurate could this thing be like just giving me a ball park figure is better than not knowing at all and so what if this thing was like 20% off, then it was as good as my blood glucose monitor is and how bad is that?  Well my friend Ken would tell me what his heart rate was on the ride then I would test mine (I was working about twice as hard as Ken was) and my heart rate was always about 60 thingies below his which my resting heart rate is like 88 and from the pictures above you can tell that it is off just with me being idle.  In the end all those people that laughed at me for buying a 6.99 dollar heart rate monitor was right that I just waisted 6.99 dollars on a watch that tells me what my heart rate definitely is not.  Now I am back to the drawing board and going to have to pony up some real money and get one with that bra thingy.  Wait till my 19 dollar GPS unit arives I bet it will work perfectly fine!