My Polar RS200sd was delivered by UPS yesterday. The delivery box was trashed, but the Polar box inside was fine. I didn’t get a chance to try everything yet. When I first turned it on, the screen was filled with junk. All of the little LCD pieces were on. I tried pressing all of the buttons for a reset, but that didn’t work. I was beginning to think I got a bad watch. But one of the tiems I did the reset, it finally cleared. It asked me a bunch of questions, and I did the setup.
I tried the Polar Fitness Test to find my “OwnIndex”. Reading through the instructions, I think I neglected to lie down and rest 1-3 minutes before doing the test. I might have laid down for a minutes as I read the manul trying to figure out how to to start the test. I will have to try it again. My OwnIndex result from my first try was 50. That was rated “very good”. Looking at the chart in the book, 50 is as towards the top of the Very Good range for my age group, and greater than 51 is “Elite”. Not sure how meaningfull the results are though. It is still interesting.
After karate class, I got home, changed, and jumped on the treadmill. I did my 15 minutes warm up, ran/jogged/walked for 3 miles, then did another 15 minutes of cool down. I didn’t try the foot pod as I read it is not accurate on a treadmill. But the heart monitor results seemed to flow differently than my Oregon Scientific HR102. The Polar doesn’t jump around as much. I am guessing that they are averaging the numbers a little to keep them from jumping around so much. But that would also delay them a little.
I am hoping to get an opportunity to test the foot pod before the half marathon race on Sunday. It is raining today. There is a small 1/16th mile indoor oval track down at the community center. So maybe tonight or tomorrow night I will go down there and run some laps.

Posted by Rob in Running on September 13th, 2006 |