Category: Reviews

The JogBlog guide to overheating in winter

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I’ve obviously become a complete wuss since moving to Kent. In London, it’d have to be at least minus-something before I even slightly pondered wearing long sleeves. This morning, although it was 9 degrees, I put on long sleeves, my Hippsy, my touchscreen gloves and because the top I was wearing had a rather wide neck, my Buff.

buff

I’d worn my Buff a few days ago on my bike. It’s great on a bike if you don’t like strangling yourself by doing your jacket right up, they keep the draught out perfectly. And if you don’t mind looking a bit of a div, you can pull it up over your nose to keep the chill off your mouth. You can even wear it on your head. In fact, there are so many ways to wear a Buff, when you buy one, they’ll send you a booklet and a DVD demonstrating all the different ways.

Today’s run was a 2.5 miler to see how unfit I was. It was also to make me feel slightly less bad about the scales showing me in the dreaded double figures for the first time ever. I had been expecting it – I haven’t exercised properly for weeks and I’ve been eating and drinking loads, the weight didn’t come on by accident. Still, marathon training and Janathon should sort that out. Won’t it?

Stats:
Distance: 2.5 miles-ish
Time: 30 minutes-ish
Pace: Slow
Walking breaks: 0 (yay)
Long sleeve tops: 1
Hippsys: 1
Pairs of touchscreen gloves: 1
Buffs: 1
Too many pieces of clothing: 3
Digits on the scales: Double
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Nike Vapor Windrunner Women’s Running Jacket

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I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be wearing pastel. Nike said they were sending me their Nike Element Shield Max Jacket which comes in silver, so it was a bit of a surprise to open the package and find a mint green jacket (which was the Nike Vapor Windrunner Women’s Running Jacket that they’d sent by mistake). I’m really not a pastel person. But no one was looking, so I put it on and oh, actually, it looked great. It fits perfectly and is light and comfortable. It kept me warm and dry before the Great South Run, it keeps me warm and dry when I walk to the gym, it keeps me warm and dry when I cycle to and back from the station and the hood even stayed up on my pea-head when I cycled back one evening through the rain. Oh yes, I’m a fan of this jacket.

It’s definitely mint green though

nike-vapor-windrunner-front

nike-vapor-windrunner-backand not yellow like it looks on their website (the website says it’s yellow, so either they do have a yellow one or they get yellow and green mixed up).

Nike-Vapor-Windrunner-Womens-Running-Jacket

Nike-Vapor-Windrunner-Womens-Running-Jacket-back

What you can’t see from the photos on the Nike website is the hand warmers in the sleeves.

nike-vapor-windrunner-sleeve  

The only thing missing is an inside pocket. I do like an inside pocket. It does have two zipped side pockets though, one of them includes another pocket for your MP3 player and a little hole to thread your headphones through.

If you need a running jacket, I’d definitely put this on your list for Santa.

Where did you get that hat (and gloves)?

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Of course, I had to go and Google for the lyrics to that song and found out that for nearly forty-three years, I’ve been singing the wrong words (not that I sing it often, honest). I always thought it went something like:

Where did you get that hat

Where did you get that hat?

Isn’t it a lovely one

I’d like one like that

only to find out that it’s actually:

Where did you get that hat

Where did you get that tile?

Isn’t it a nobby one

And just the proper style

Which, although having impeccable rhyme and metre, doesn’t make much sense – to me, at least. If someone called my hat ‘nobby’, I’d think they were either saying I looked a bit of a dick (which, admittedly, isn’t beyond the realms of feasibility) or that my hat was in need of a JML de-bobbler.

Anyway, back to my hat. My hat is an iHat and it has speakers in it and a cable to plug into your phone or MP3 player. I took it for a trial run on a run this morning.

ihat(Yes, I know I look like I’ve been caught on CCTV robbing the local offy.)

All was ok with my iHat at first. It was warm and comfy and I could hear the music over the noise of the traffic on the busy road I live on but it didn’t take long until the iHat started slipping down over my eyes and so I tried rolling the front up and that was okay for a bit but then it started slipping down again so I tried rolling it up again but it kept slipping down and so it’d be great for people who like wearing hats when they’re running (it did a great job at keeping my hair out of my eyes) but only if they haven’t got little pea-heads like mine.

The iHat is only £9.99 (at the time of writing) and has been updated since I received my one, as it now comes with handsfree capability with an integrated in-line microphone, volume control and selection button.

The iHat looks better on the girl in this video. Hard to believe, I know.

Onto my new gloves. I used to have some touchscreen gloves (I say ‘used to’ as the last time I saw them, they were languishing in a bin in a toilet in Plymouth two miles into the Great South Run. I was happy to dump them because they weren’t responsive and they weren’t warm enough when it got really cold. These new touchscreen gloves are incredibly responsive and they’re woolly and warm and also have the added bonus of looking like normal gloves.

touch-screen-gloves

These touchscreen gloves are only £3.99 at the moment and also come in pink (they didn’t have pink when I got mine, bah).

Paramount  Zone don’t only sell hats and gloves though, oh no. They have tons of funky stuff on there, including loads of ideas for Christmas presents.

Not just another running app. VIA app – sat nav for runners

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Capture

Nooooooooooooooooo, I thought, when I got the email. No, I flipping well don’t want to try yet another running app. Then I read the email properly and thought, well, this is something new – a sat-nav for runners. The best bit though is that it works with iTunes and the audio will work around your music playlist.

The VIA app is the world’s first sat-nav for runners/cyclists. It’s map-based with step-by-step real-time audio directions to talk you through your route. Although it’s a very simple app, it took me a while to work out how to plot a route but I managed to do it eventually by telling it where I wanted it to start and then telling it where I wanted to finish – in my case, exactly the same place where I had started.

Then came the tricky bit. Because it’s sat-nav and not a route planner, it wants to tell you how to get from A-B in the quickest way and so, despite there being pins you can drop in to make it go via a certain point on the map, you only get three pins to use, making it impossible (for me, at least) to get a decent amount of mileage in. I only wanted a four mile route but could only get it as far as about 3.5 miles before giving up trying to place the three allowed pins in strategic places.

I tried the VIA app for the first time on Tuesday and found it a whole heap of fun. The voiceover is a well-spoken older gentleman who I named Brian and imagined him sitting back and relaxing in the non-talky bits by listening to my music. I hope he liked it.

On Tuesday, unfortunately, Brian was having a blond day (in my head he has dark hair) and didn’t seem to know his left from right and I did at one point wonder if I had my phone upside down. This could be because I confused him as he kept saying ‘off-route – recalculating mileage’ and instead of turning round and going the other way, continued until he caught me up. I especially confused him when I went into a field instead of running down the road and after he’d said ‘off-route – recalculating mileage’ about ten times, I thought he was going to start getting angry and shout at me. But Brian remained a perfectly patient gentleman and didn’t shout at me.

At the end of my run when I got home by going the right way and ignoring his requests to turn left when I flipping well knew I had to turn right, a screen came up to show me how far I had ran, the time it had taken, the average speed and the calories burnt. It also gave me the option to be a saddo and share it on Twitter or Facebook. I then learnt that if you go away from this screen, you can’t get it back again as it doesn’t archive anything. Another feature I would have liked is for it to show me the map with the route I plotted before commencing the run, and the route I actually took.

So, on first impressions? Great fun but needs more features and it needs to learn its left from right.

To give it a fairer review (and because it was so much fun to use and having Brian in my ear made the run more interesting), I decided to plot out a route where I would only go on the road and not confuse Brian by going in a field and whichever way he told me to go, I would go and not rebel and go a different way (even though I knew I was going the right way and it was just that Brian didn’t know his left from right).

I switched the sat-nav on, walked to the gate and Brian piped up with ‘off-route’. Hang on Bri, I thought, I’M STILL IN THE FRONT GARDEN, GIVE ME A FLIPPING CHANCE! and I got out of the gate, crossed the road and ran down the road I told him I was going down. After a while I wondered if I had turned Brian off as he was being very quiet. He must have just been kicking back and listening to Calvin Harris

as, after a while he said in 200 yards (or was it metres? I can’t remember) I had to turn right, which was the right way – yay. Brian continued to tell me the right way for the next mile until I had to cross over the road. I’m sorry Brian, but I am not crossing across a big busy roundabout, I’m going to go to the lights to cross over. He didn’t like this and kept telling me I was going off route. Still, we got back on track and I happily ran down the road with Brian popping up now and again to tell me when to turn left or right. He did have a habit though of saying turn right NOW which would usually have had me either going into a) someone’s front garden; b) a ditch; or c) a brick wall.

There was a weird point when he told me to turn right down a road that didn’t exist until I saw it a few yards up on the left but which was a no-through-road, so I ignored him and carried on going and he seemed ok with that.  He navigated impressively through the new housing development until I got through to the other side and he wanted me to turn left when carrying straight on was the way I wanted to go but I thought maybe he knew a shortcut so I went the way he said but then he told me I’d gone off route and so I turned round and went back the way I knew I should have gone in the first place and then I got to the bit where on Tuesday I went along the path that runs parallel to the road but I thought, to be fair to Brian, I will stay on the road and just hoped that he appreciated that it was a road without a pavement and if I got run over it would be all his fault and then I got to the bit of the road where there’s a pavement on the other side and I thought PAVEMENT AHOY! but I was on a bend and couldn’t see if anything was coming and so I had to carry on dicing with death until I got to a straight bit and bombed across the road to get to the pavement and then I went past the primary school and the kids were out playing and I though aah, aren’t they sweet and although people think I hate kids, I’m only not keen on them in public places like supermarkets and restaurants but when they’re safely confined in a playground and huddled together wearing the same uniform I think they’re kind of cute, like puppies in a pet shop, and then I got to the end of the road and Brian said turn right and I’m glad he said that because that was the right way and then I was home and I remembered to take a screen shot of the run I had just done.

VIA-app-screenshot

So, second impressions? I flipping love it! Like I said before, it’s so much fun. If the developers can improve the number of pins you can use to plan your route (unlimited would be good) and have the facility to look back over previous runs and use the routes again, and let you see the route you took overlaid on the route you were supposed to take, it’d be perfect. As it is, unless I didn’t plot it properly, I can’t see how I could use it in marathon training if, for example, I wanted to plot out an 18-mile run. Also, I’m not sure how it would cope if I did plot a long run on it but wanted to also incorporate parks and cycle paths into it (which I will be doing).

But the developers have told me that it is still a work in progress and all the features I’d like to see are things they’ll hopefully be adding in the future.

The VIA app is available in the iTunes store for £1.99 – I’d buy it if I were you, what would you call yours?




PC Fitness–Your Personal Trainer

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pc_fitness_DVDI’ve got a new personal trainer. She’s called Maya and lives in my PC. As you know, I love my body pump class at the gym but there’s only one class a week that’s at a time that suits me (first thing Monday morning – no thanks) and I want to do weights on other days of the week too. Weights in the main gym on my own don’t appeal; partly because I’d be too self-conscious to use the free weights in front of everyone (although I know no one actually gives a toss what anyone else is doing) and partly because I wouldn’t know what I was doing, and I get bored doing weights at home. So I got myself a DVD.

The PC Fitness: Your Personal Trainer DVD is cool. It’s not just weights – you can choose your workout from 500 exercises including Pilates, yoga, cardio fitness, flexibility, strength training and weight loss routines. You set up your profile and control the music, setting, length of workout, what days you want to workout and how tough it is. It even has meal plans worked out based on your personal info, although I haven’t used any meal plans yet as it was a bit of a hunt for any vegetarian recipes.

I’m loving this DVD; so far I’ve done Pilates and yoga for the first time (blimey, that was hard), lots of cardio (I’ve finally got star jumps sussed – yay, me), and strength training. If you’re like me and get stuck and can’t follow the routines, there are tutorials to talk you through the moves. Also, you can tell it which equipment you own from a choice of hand weights, stability ball, heart rate monitor and step, and the workout will incorporate these. Although the equipment isn’t necessary, I like buying things, so I bought the Biosync Fitness Set which comes with two hand weights (useless really at 0.5kg each but hey ho), a stability ball, step and resistance band.

I can’t fault this fitness DVD – it’s so much fun. Maya even says good morning to you when you log in and says she missed you if you miss a session. She’s pretty cool for a CGI chick (was almost tempted to say ‘pretty fly for a CGI’ but stopped myself).

One of the best things about it is that you don’t have to leave the house to do your workout. I would advise getting dressed in your running/gym gear though, as it is a proper workout and you will sweat and, as I’ve found out, doing it in jeans and normal bra isn’t a great idea – so get that sports bra on, girls! (I fancy this gorgeous purple one); also wearing some light trainers such as some New Balance Minimus will stop your feet from hurting during the jumping up and down bits.

This DVD can’t be used on your TV, you have to use it on a computer and you do need a bit of space, so I’ve been using it on the laptop in the front room instead of on my main pc in the small room I work in. 

I bought PC Fitness: Your Personal Trainer from Amazon for the bargain price of £3.99 including postage and totally recommend it (although it’s turned me into even more of a hermit doing my exercise indoors instead of going out running, cycling or going to the gym).

Natural Hero Hot Ginger Muscle Rub and Cool Peppermint Muscle Spritz

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natural_hero_hot_ginger_muscle_rubA few weeks ago, I went to body pump for the first time in months. The next day, I woke up wondering who had run me over with a steamroller.

A few days after that, I was asked if I’d like to try out Natural Hero’s Hot Ginger Muscle Rub and their Cool Peppermint Muscle Spritz. WHY DIDN’T YOU ASK ME THIS A WEEK AGO WHEN I COULDN’T FLIPPING WALK?, I replied, albeit a bit more politely than that, and without the shouty capitals.

natural_hero_cool_peppermint_muscle_spritzAnyway, since receiving the muscle rub and muscle spritz, my muscles have been fine and dandy, and no, it’s not just because I haven’t been back to the gym since, thank you very much. So, I haven’t been able to try them. I have sniffed them though and mmmmm, they smell good! Much better than that stinky Deep Heat stuff.

What I also like about these products is that they are made with natural things, not chemically things and are free from ibuprofen, sprain relief and numbing agents, which means that they are highly unlikely to interact with medicinal products.

But what I mostly like about these are that they are tested on athletes, not animals.

I’m sure they work well too, and if you’d like to give them a go, they’re available from health and sports stores UK-wide, and from specialist retailers including Snow and Rock, Sweatshop, Planet Organic and Wholefoods Market.

Under Armour Bra and Cold Black T-Shirt

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The Under Armour Cold Black T-shirt blurb says ‘black out the sun’ so I was going to wait until it was sunny to try it out but the first time in the last month I’ve done any exercise was in the gym and we don’t get much sun in there but today I was up nice and early and decided to go for a run and try out the t-shirt and the Under Armour Bra.

The Armour Bra has an appropriate name as it’s a sturdy piece of kit. Despite it’s sturdiness, it’s a good-looking bra and if you were one of those gym bunnies that like to prance around the gym in your bra then you’d be proud to show this one off.

Under-Armour-Bra

Still, I’m not a gym bunny who prances around the gym in my bra and it got hidden under the Cold Black t-shirt.

cold-black

I’m sorry Under Armour, I hate this t-shirt, it’s not for me at all. The neck is far too low cut (it didn’t even cover the top of the bra), scooped and baggy – I like a much closer fit in my t-shirts.

The feel of the t-shirt wasn’t right. It felt more like a smart casual top I’d wear in an office (if it didn’t have the logo and reflective strip on it), not like a running top at all.

The fit wasn’t right. I can’t describe how it wasn’t right – it just didn’t feel right.

What I did like though was the length, some running tops can be a bit short, this was just right.

As for the bra… Well, it may be pretty, but it chafed my shoulder and back to fuck and I’ve never had a sports bra chafe me before.

For a (far) more positive review of the t-shirt, visit fairweatherrunner’s blog – she loved it, runners come in all shapes and sizes, after all.

Shaun got a nice orange t-shirt from Under Armour, I’m going to steal that from him and wear that instead.

Workplay Gymwise II Backpack

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gymwise-backpackI’ve been through a lot of backpacks. Every time I buy a pretty one, it falls apart. Even the expensive Sweaty Betty one I bought thinking ‘they are a sports specialist shop, this won’t fall apart’ did. My current rucksack was bought at Walthamstow Market for about £5 and it’s lasted a few years. Which is great, but it’s not very pretty.

The Workplay Gymwise II Backpack is very pretty. It looks a lot like my old Sweaty Betty one so I’m hoping this one stands up to me shoving my uni books and gym kit in it.

According to the website, it’s an ideal "run to work and go to the gym later" bag but although it has got a sternum strap, there’s no waist strap, so if you did try a running commute with it, it’d be bouncing around all over the place and you’d probably cut your run short and jump on the bus instead.

Still, it is a brilliantly functional bag. It’s got LOADS of pockets, a washbag for putting your toiletries in, a detachable laundry bag for putting your sweaty gym kit in and a separate compartment for trainers.

The front pocket is only the depth of a hand and I found it perfect for putting my Kindle in. The two side pockets are big enough for water bottles and there are other smaller pockets for your phone, washbag and MP3 player. The main space is plenty big enough for my uni books and gym kit.

I tried the bag out cycling to the station and it was light and comfortable, although it didn’t feel very secure without using the sternum strap.

For a demonstration of all the features of this rucksack, watch this video and if pink’s not your bag, it’s also available in black.

Bupa fitness assessment: review

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bupa-logoSlightly overweight, that’s what the health adviser said. I didn’t take this news well. I felt so numb he might as well have told me I had cancer. Pathetic.

I’d put off my first fitness assessment after Warriorwoman said she’d had to cycle with her tits out. Am I bollocks doing that, I thought. Actually, I didn’t just think it, I said it publicly on Twitter and the Bupa man saw it and emailed me and said ‘keep your shirt on’; not in a ‘get over yourself you stupid bint’ way, but a literal ‘it’s ok, you can keep your shirt on’.

I wasn’t convinced and so I waited for Fairweatherrunner to have her assessment and she made it sound ok, so I emailed the Bupa man back and said ok, sorry for being a wimp, I’ll do it after all. He said yay (or something like that).

The health adviser came to get me from reception on time and after showing me to the changing room (no toilet in there and I was BURSTING), we went into another room and he talked me through about what was going to happen in the assessment. Then he weighed me and measured my height and that’s when I found out that I had got heavier (I’d reached the dreaded double figures) and shrunk (Shaun will be pleased he is now officially a quarter of an inch taller than me). I then had my waist measured and I thought, that’s not fair, it’s 4:30 in the afternoon, it’d be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay smaller at 8:30 in the morning.

He then showed me into another room where he said I could have something to eat and drink while I waited for him to set the lab up.

A couple of minutes later he returned and took me into the lab which was a room with a bed/couch thing and a stationary bike in front of which were some monitors.

He took my blood pressure and said it was slightly high but said it could be due to ‘white coat syndrome’ (I was probably looking at the bike and thinking I’m not cycling with my tits out and you can’t make me, so there).

Then I did a lung capacity test which involved putting a mouthpiece in your mouth and breathing in as deep as you can and then exhaling as hard as you can for as long as you can. Surprisingly, after 25 years of smoking (not any more though, I stopped six years ago), my lung capacity was fine. Ha!

Next he measured my body fat percentage by placing a bit of foil on my wrist and foot (it was probably more hi-tech than I’m making it sound).

After this he asked me to go behind the curtain and take my bra and top off and asked me if I wanted a female to come and attach the electrode thingies. Wanting to keep up my sophisticated-woman-of-the-world image I squeaked out that it was ok for him to do it. After attaching ten electrode thingies to various parts of my upper body, he said I could put my t-shirt back on. This took quite a while trying to get it on with wires hanging off from all over me.

I got on the bike and he said some people only last 45 seconds and others can make it for 20 minutes. I thought just how high do you have the resistance if people can only manage to sit on it for that long? But then I thought, ha, I do spin, I know about resistance, I will sit on this bike all day and show you.

The hardest bit about being on the bike was the mouthpiece. Oh my god, my jaw was aching so much I wanted to rip the bloody thing out. Cycling was easy. I had to cycle slowly, keeping my heart rate at about 60% of the maximum (he’d done the 220-age thing to get my max heart rate, which I actually think is a rubbish way to get someone’s heart rate – if they want to get someone’s max heart rate they need to stick them on a treadmill for some intervals involving hills, says me the creative writing student serious health professional).

After I’d finished cycling he showed me the graphs and charts and things and said I was good at burning fat. Yay. I was allowed to go back behind the curtain then and remove all the wires.

Then he asked me if I could touch my toes. Yikes, I could in my 20s, but haven’t actually tried to for years. Why would I? Still, I said I thought so and so he asked me to do it. HA, YES, RESULT, I CAN TOUCH MY TOES, WHOOP. He was impressed and said that runners are usually stiff and can’t touch their toes.

Next I had to sit on the floor with my legs outstretched and push a wooden thing along a bench to see how far I could push it. I pushed it about 14cm or so which he said was about average.

(I should mention here that at some point during all of this the doctor came in to say hello and to make sure I wasn’t going to die. He also said my blood pressure was slightly high and that I should get it checked out but it was probably nothing to worry about and I was fine to do the assessment.)

Then it was all over and we went into another room so he could tell me how fit I was. He said I was fit and that he could tell that just by looking at me on the bike but that there was room for improvement. He said I should run more often and do other forms of exercise.

THEN HE TOLD ME I WAS FAT. Well, not exactly. ‘Slightly overweight’ were his exact words. I have no idea what he said after that as I was too shocked. I’ve always wanted to be smaller (I liked being 8.5 stone even if people said I was too thin) but didn’t think I was actually officially overweight. Fuck.

I took immediate action and went off to meet my mates and drink champagne, wine, lager and eat garlic bread and pizza had a salad and some tap water.

A week later I got a full written report. This blog post is already long enough so I won’t go into detail about what it says but there’s a ton of information in it, far more than what was said at the assessment (although I suppose he might have said some of it after saying I was fat).

It contains a summary, suggestions for exercise and healthy eating and lots of graphs showing where on the scale I was today for things like body mass index (normal), body fat (above average), waist-height ratio (caution), activity level (ideal), lung function (normal), blood pressure (slightly raised), flexibility (moderate) and strength (moderate).

So, in conclusion, the Bupa fitness assessment was thorough and, if after following their advice, you were to go back after six months and have another one, it would be interesting to see what (if any) improvements had been made.

If you want to know your fitness levels, I’d definitely recommend going along for an assessment. You can find out all the details on the Bupa website.




Review: Scosche Wireless Pulse Monitor

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scoshe

This thing was a right pain in the arse. I’d been sent it a couple of months ago, along with the Jabra Sport Wireless Headphones and while I’d figured out the headphones easily enough, this Scosche Wireless Pulse Monitor was like going back to the 90s in a ‘what the fuck is this thing supposed to do then?’ way; not intuitive at all.  But unlike in the 90s, when I was happy to sit all day playing with techie things and making them work, then breaking them, then making them work again,  now I just want things to work straight away with no faffing around.

What I hadn’t really gathered was, was that there wasn’t really anything to gather. The monitor (which you wear on your upper lower arm (don’t you love my grasp of anatomical terms?) works with the myTREK app (which you’ll be prompted for when you set up your first workout) via Bluetooth. You tell the app you want a new workout, name it, choose your activity (running, cycling, mountain biking, yoga, walking, aerobics, resting and other), then choose free training or a ‘zone’ to train in (resting, weight loss, fitness, performance or red line), then the type of training (free workout, free distance, time, workout and distance, distance [setting the distance] or calorie).

Setting up your profile on the app is simple enough. You tell it your gender, date of birth and weight and it sets your max heart rate for you using the dubious 220-your age calculation, setting mine at 178 (you’ll see later why this is bollocks).

After I was all set up, I gave it a test run in the house, just by walking around doing usual things like sitting on the sofa. My heart rate skipped along merrily between 55-70 bpm until I got up to get a beer from the fridge when it shot up to 191. Huh? I know I like a drink, but I didn’t think I found it that exciting.

I tested it again a couple of days later and I didn’t name the workout so don’t know what I was doing but whatever it was, it must have been good, as my heart rate hit a max of 231bpm and I burned 202 calories in 22 minutes. If I knew what that was, I’d do it again.

Looking at the calendar now, there are a couple more I haven’t named, so I’ll ignore these, but the next one looks like I’ve managed to set it up better and it says I walked for 35 minutes, burned 78 calories and had an average pulse of 69 bpm. Actually, I’ve just decided this is rubbish as it says that walk was 0.17 of a mile and it doesn’t take me 35 minutes to walk 0.17 of a mile.

A few days later I tested it again on the rowing machine in the conservatory. Determined this time not to fuck it up, I made sure I set it up correctly. It says I rowed for 30 minutes with an average pulse of 117 bpm (max 131), which sounds about right. The only thing that doesn’t sound right is the calorie count of 288 calories. The rowing machine display said I’d burnt 55. Hmm.

Shaun also tested it on the rowing machine (putting his details into the profile settings). His results were 18 minutes, 91 bpm average pulse (138 max) and 98 calories which, seeing as he puts in much more effort than me on the rowing machine (judging by his smelly-dog-that’s-just-been-in-a-river impression on his exit from the conservatory), is probably about right.

The one thing I thought this monitor would be useful for, for me, would be down the gym, to see how many calories I burn in spin and body pump classes. I haven’t been brave enough to go to a class yet with a monitor on my arm (no need for your phone to also be on your arm – the signal from the monitor travels up to 33 feet [although if you do want to wear it on your arm because you use your phone for music, you can control the music from the monitor strap, as well as get audio alerts while you workout]) but yesterday, I wore it down the gym and used it while I was on the machines to see what the results were and how they compared to the display on the machines.

I got on the rowing machine and kept my phone on the floor so I could see the display (your current heart rate is displayed in big white numbers so very easy to see). During my 20 minutes on the rowing machine, my heart rate kept at a steady 120bpm. This all changed when I’d finished on the rowing machine and got on the treadmill to do the Audiofuel Thru the Gears interval session. I love this interval session, the music is fab and really motivates me to push myself. This is now scientifically proven by the heart rate monitor reading which shows that my heart rate went up to 183 bpm then went back down as I cooled down and then went on the cross-trainer, where my heart rate stayed at a steady 160 bpm (obviously still raised after pushing myself on the treadmill).

After I’d finished in the gym, it said I’d burned 890 calories, which I reckon is way over, especially as the machines in the gym said I’d burned about 430. Unless the monitor takes into consideration the calories I’d be burning anyway, just by living, and it’s not just exercise calories burned?

So, I’ll be using it down the gym so I can make sure I’m making more effort on the rowing machine but I’m not sure of its accuracy. How accurate can it be with the dubious 220-your age calculation? Especially as I went over my ‘max’ heart rate more than once? For serious heart rate training, I’d say it was useless, unless you know about the zones and which zones you need to be training in. I’m not sure you can set these yourself though so maybe even if you do know about zones, it’s still useless.

Another thing I’m not impressed with is that I thought there must be more to it than that for the RRP of £139? Some pretty maps and charts and graphs and stuff? But no. It’s £139 just to tell you your current heart rate and there are a lot of watches around that will tell you that for a lot less money.

I’m going to give it a spin at my spin class tomorrow, and I’ll let you know the results.

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