I need to forward that link to Mrs. Fred. She just got herself a Garmin 910xt last week and has been full of questions since:-) By the way, did you know there is now a Ver.3 of the "Premium" "Soft" strap? It's constructed with a bit of silver something or other woven into some of the elastic and supposedly a third contact or grounding patch to the one side which is supposed to help eliminate some of the HR spike issues as well as being more durable. It came in Mrs. Fred's Garmin kit. I would promise an update on how it functions, but, I think she may not use it as much as I would and there's no way I'm going to convince her to "loan" it to me to go get it sweaty:-) I'll just have to continue with my experiment with the "standard" "cheap ass" (which costs the same as the 'premium' strap) :-) So far, so good, with that though. I really think this strap thing is a classic example of a company looking for ways to minimize production cost of a product and then looking for a way to market it.

With regard to the HR stuff. Yep. I haven't got power. But, my MHR is significantly above the mathematical models. My LTHR I've arrived at through studying rides that I know I couldn't have gone harder on and trusting that I could have maintained 1-2 bpm higher if my legs hadn't fatigued. My average across several very hard events has been 161-163. So, I've basically been using that as my presumed LTHR. Compated with a max of 183-185. I know, you can't have a range to a max value, but, day to day variation, lack of trust in the garmin strap, etc. In practice I've learned that I can maintain mid to upper 160s for extended efforts (the 6-12 minutes it takes for most of our local climbs) without burning any matches. Break 170 and I've lit the match. It's just a matter of how long I want to let it burn. Get over 177 and I'm measuring max burn time in seconds.

But, there is some reasonable degree of day to day variation from the above based on hydration, coffee consumption :-), sleep, etc.