Skip to main content

New to optical heart rate monitors? You need to read this.

Garmin Forerunner 235

Time for an update

After nearly three years of wearing my Forerunner 230, I thought it was time to do an upgrade. For a while I had my eye on the Forerunner 235 but the price was never right. In the process, I had read multiple reviews and was pretty convinced it was the right watch for me... until I bought it.

After about a week of wearing it, I was utterly disappointed with the performance of the HR monitor and the battery life. And nothing I had read before warned me about it so I figured out it would make sense to write a piece in here so that other people may be aware before they take the plunge, especially now that the prices have dropped to under $170 as rumour has it that the 235 is on its way out.

Rather than writing a new review for an old watch, I'm going to concentrate on the HRM. First of all, yes, it is oh so convenient, especially if you've ever trained with a chest strap and you still have the the scars to prove it. But also, it's different technology and you need to understand it to make the most of it.

Chest strap vs Optical 

A chest strap measures your pulse via small electrical signals generated as your heart contracts. It then sends the information back to a connected device, usually, your smartphone. Optical monitors, on the other hand, use light (generally green) shone through the skin to detect blood flow through as bones, blood and skin reflect the light differently. The key takeout here is that both methods require a good connection (i.e. contact with the skin) to be effective.
That was my first disappointment. As a rule, I don't like wearing my watch too tight and my F230 was perfect in that sense. I could wear it whichever way I wanted. the F235 wouldn't take any reading accurately until I tightened it.

A tight watch is not enough

So I tightened the watch and still, my training session readings were all over the shop. Usually, it would record readings in Zone 5 as soon as I stepped out of the house. Enter disappointment number 2. No matter what pace I was doing, I was always overtraining as far as the Garmin was concerned. I had sessions where I wanted to scream and stamp on the bleeping watch! As it happens, it's not just a matter of wearing the watch tightly. You also need to ensure you're wearing it on a "flat" surface of your skin. For me, this meant wearing it about 2 fingers above where I normally wear any other watch. Other people claim it works best on the inside of the wrist. Some others say, it needs to be covered so the light bouncing from the skin doesn't get any external "noise".

The HR monitor will impact the battery life

So, Garmin tells us the battery life is about 11 hours of training or up to 9 days of normal wear... blah, blah, blah... the thing is, they phrase it in a way that you think, 9 days of normal wear? Yeah, that's what I'm used to with my current watch. Oh disappointment number 3... the optical HRM actually uses up battery like a demon if you combine 5 days of training and everyday heart rate tracking resulting in a measly 3/4 days' battery life.

In short

Once you get over all of this, the watch is actually fine. I'm learning to like it (not love it) and learning to train by heart rate zones.

Labels:
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visualization for beginners

I've been a competitive athlete all my life. I've been involved in different sports at different levels since the age of 8 and along the way, a lot of coaches have spoken to me or my team about visualization. "See yourself scoring that try" "See yourself winning that match". Only now I realise that I never understood what they meant. It's easy to close your eyes and see yourself scoring a try, a winning goal or whatever, but all boys do that when they play footie on the street. So how does that help you achieve anything in a proper competition? That's the piece I never understood and maybe my coaches never did either. I think the confusion comes from the overlapping of two concepts: imagination and visualization. Imagination allows you to see yourself on the pilot seat of a spaceship to Mars to rescue Lady O'Mygodyouregorgeous but has nothing to do with reality. Visualization on the other hand, is about seeing yourself achieving things that you...
2 comments
Read more

How will races look like post COVID-19?

I think racing the way we're used to is gone forever. There! I've said it. No more long queues at the portaloos before the start. No more corrals with 1,000 runners touching, shaking hands, and wishing each other luck. No more post-race hugs and tears, not unless you're part of the same household. So let's reverse engineer a race and see if we can come up with a picture Social distancing So, there are 10,000 of us converging into one spot in the city. How can you make sure we all observe social distancing? That's a bit of an issue unless we're running in the desert or high in the mountains where there are acres to spare.  The queueing system We start by creating an orderly queue. In fact, we create many orderly queues around the access area to prevent overcrowding. First of all, the zone must be cordoned off for the queue system to work. Otherwise, everybody does what everybody does when there's no system in place: we invade the zone. So, all ru...
Post a Comment
Read more

How was 2018 (Part II)

So, with one successful in the bag, I was excited to test myself in the Frank Duffy 10mi race in August to see if the longer distances were improving too. Here's how it went: August - Frank Duffy 10mi As with the 10k race, the organisers moved the venue from Phoenix Park to Swords. I didn't have a clue about the route or the profile of the race. Mind you, I couldn't remember the last time I had run a 10mi race so couldn't figure out what pace to run at and this was critical.I just figured out it had to be slower than a 10k but... how much? No clue. So I ran and picked up the pace in the final 2k to come in at 1:17. I was happy with that but a friend I met at the race said "you can easily run the half in 1:40". I had never done that or got even close to it. Still as you can see, I was still improving. September - Dublin Half Marathon Crazy targets, unrealistic expectations, unachievable goals... these were some of the thoughts that were going through ...
Post a Comment
Read more