from simple to complex and back again

Over the as many years I have gone through as many different training tools. When I started to "actually" train or attempt it I invested in my first heart rate monitor. It was simple, read the display and that was about it. Of course at that point of my cycling life I really didn't need much more. As I started to get a little more serious and slowly started to understand what all the numbers meant I went to the other extreme of complex.

I liked my Garmin, it was pretty cool for what it gave me but I did find that I spent almost more time staring at the graphs on the computer than actually making the graphs. There were a couple quirks with it though that I didn't like and parts of the reason it sits on the shelf. Battery life was short. 8 hours at it's best. That's fine for most but for me and my obsession with long races I'd see that low battery life display come on way to often. I also found that it was just not comfortable to wear.

I constantly get bugged about my larger than normal wrapped grips on the mountain bikes, I have big hands and when you work with tools all day with squeezed hands fixing appliances putting your hand in the same position for an 8 hour race just doesn't work. I swear bar grips are still made for 13 year old. That said I still have skinny boney wrists and I found the Garmin to be uncomfortable to wear.

That lead back to the simple. Another extremely basic monitor that basically read my pulse but now having the wattage trainer the combination of the two gave me more than what I needed. Until now. I started to get a few twitchy things out of the monitor on my last ride. It's probably just a battery issue but there has been talks in the family that Mom has been interested in getting a monitor for here snowshoeing and return to running. I have Mom on a training program now with her treadmill.

Like the reason I needed to get new snowshoes that was all the reason I needed to go and buy a new toy. After a few questions to the crew at the MNS I stopped in to visit Jer at the Trek Store in Barrie. It was one of those things where I didn't even get a chance to ask questions like a regular consumer he just said you need this one as he points to the bottom of the case. Yes from top to bottom they go from cheapest to most expensive. Of course Jer would never lead me the wrong way because this laptop for the wrist was very on sale which made my normal thoughts come to ease.

So the new tool for the year is a Polar s725x. It has all the options I would need included and will probably overwhelm me with info. Right now I'm still stunned at how think the instruction manual is. I'll spend some time with the setup once the TCR shows up. I do like the big display, I found it a lot easier to read than my previous Polar and even the Garmin. I did put it to use last night on the rollers while doing some more spin ups and one legged things. The rest week did me good. Felt good with lots of power in the legs with just under two hours spent spinning the cranks.

Not sure what is on my agenda today since the coach's computer crashed a couple days ago and we have the first Mountainview Cycling Club meeting for 2010. Could be a ride to and from the meeting.

I have numbers to stare at, so many numbers!!!