polar RS800sd arrives

17Feb07

It was a red letter day Friday because Polar delivered their new RS800sd Heart Rate Monitor to test and review. It is a fabulous-looking device and with accompanying foot pod a whole lot lighter than my “old” S625x. I’m not big on gadgets and new toys, but the inner male is coming out in me on this one. Today it had its first outing. I will still need to calibrate the cadence pod, which measures and can evaluate the quality of my running stride. That should help with efficiency, as Polar indicate even someone as fit as Lance Armstrong appeared to have been overstriding during his New York Marathon attempt last November.

Today was a shortish steady run.

Resting Heart Rate 48

Weight 71.5 kg

Mood

Exercise energy consumed 520 kcal (10 mins bike, 35 mins steady run)

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432 Responsespolar+RS800sd+arrives2007-02-17+18%3A34%3A24knackered+down+under to “polar RS800sd arrives”

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1 Dan on Mar 24th, 2007 said:

Hello,
I came across your site while looking for info on the 800sd polar watch. I’m thinking of buying it but was wondering if you could tell me what you think about it?

Thanks!
Dan.
2 knackeredhack on Mar 25th, 2007 said:

Dan

It is early days, not least because I’ve lost a month’s training since the computer arrived due to virus. The first feature I am interested initially is the OwnZone function, which can set a training heart-rate ceiling for a particular session based on performance in warm-up. This helps avoid overtraining. That has worked well so far.

Also, and the cadence measuring footpod looks like it is going to be very useful, and Polar assure me is a unique feature. The cadence, or rpm of your legs, indicates if your running technique is good, or not. Over-striding can lead to injury, slows you down, and is common among amateur and novice runners, so it sounds like a very worthwhile parameter to analyse. My early measurements show quite a high RPM, but still some room for improvement. I’m hoping extra miles will generate that as I become more efficient, although there are exercises I’m told that can help turn the legs over more quickly.

The Polar Pro Training software is a big improvement on the software I had been using with the older s625x, providing a lot more information to be represented graphically.

As this is the second Polar product I’ve had, I would not hesitate to recommend it. Suunto may be worth investigating. They have an interesting post-training technology, which again is based on heart-rate variability measurements, and I know some of the elite endurance athletes at Bath Sports Training Village are starting to use them.