Heart Rate Running

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

I have used a HRM for oh, about 18 months now (Polar S210), and I find it a very useful tool for people like me who can't help but run too fast. If you can stick to old adage of running your LSDs at a comfortable "carry on a conversation" pace, and are not training to win races, HRMs may not be necessary. But if you're like me and need something to hold you back, then a HRM is definitely very useful. I find it very difficult staying at or below 75% of maxHR without one. And for endurance running, this seems to be really important, so I use mine every run (and on many walks, for that matter).

The chest strap might get annoying toward the end of a marathon - one day I'll let you know , otherwise I don't find it much of a problem. They are making HRMs with the sensors built into the wrist strap, but I don't know how effective these are.

As for calculating MaxHR, the formula may not be wholly accurate, but you get a good idea of what's going on, so as long as you're comparing apples with apples, a rough formula seems to be OK.

MLCM