What heart monitor would you recommend? page 2

[peril]

You should be breathing more heavily than usual but still be able to carry on a conversation. The technology is purely discretionary

[adamm]

I bought one of these, and it was cheap and worked great. Still works great, as a matter of fact, though I use it a lot less. To be honest, now that I'm convinced my heart recovers in a reasonable period of time, I don't really use it. HIIT training with sprinting doesn't really require a monitor. You KNOW when your heart is maxed out...

--Me

[honeypig]

I'm not a gym and don't think I will end up becoming one, so the Garmin's lack of communication with gym machines shouldn't be a problem. On the other hand the possibility of feeding my data into some software never even occurred to me. Not sure I have a use for that. Do you do that so you can keep a record of how much exercise you've been doing so you can track your progress and set targets and suchlike?

Yes, it's pretty amazing--I was not a big Garmin fan, but it actually is pretty cool to plug your Garmin into your computer and have it display your route, the hill profile, your pace per mile and pace at any given point on the run, etc. If you're just running for the heck of it, you surely don't need all this, but if you're training for a specific purpose, it makes it a lot faster and easier to enter your info into your online running log. Also, if a person is working w/a coach, either online or otherwise, it's a very simple and extremely clear way for the coach to see exactly what the runner did in any given workout. It is also, as you mentioned, a good and accurate way to go back and look at where you were a month or 6 months or a year ago.