Originally Posted by
SaiKaiTai
I use a Polar FS1 HRM. Pretty simple, no bells and whistles, it just has a settable alarm for my upper and lower limits and it counts my beats. That's about it. I think it cost about 60 bucks or so.
I ride 13-15 miles 2 to 3 days a week during the week and then 1 20-25 mile ride on the weekend.
I *have* done longer rides but not consistently. Now that our puppy is "maturing", more, longer rides might be back in my future.
Just keep at it, you *will* improve.
Ride every hill you can in your local area - short ones, long ones, whatever; apparently, they all count.
Thanks. I've not used a HRM before. Do they all use the chest strap? (sounds inconvenient).
I tried a different tack on hills today. Did a 53 miler and decided to try to keep the cadence in the 90-100 range by using whatever gears I have (granny got some use today) rather than trying to keep speed up and using higher gears (which fatigues me pretty rapidly). Using this technique, I was generally able to keep the RPM's up on the rolling hills I rode today and I didn't tend to blow up and just chug up like I have in the past.
Note: Our hills are NOT miles long like some of you have.