which average HR to trust?

[Antonio]

Hello all,

I've been erging on Model D & E's at my local gym. I have a Polar S150 (non-coded belt) and the Acumen pickup.

While erging both the wrist watch & monitor display identical or nearly identical HRs (with only occasional monitor signal dropout).

Unfortunately, the average HRs reported by the Polar watch and erg monitor are almost always off by 8-12 bpm. The monitor is always the higher estimate. My intuition from seeing the numbers on the screen during the pieces is that the monitor is the one that is incorrect (too high).

Any thoughts? Which is more accurate?

I'm hoping to start training on the water w/ HR (planning on using the new Speedcoach) and I want to be able to compare on the water & erg HR.

What does the erg do w/ the missing data points (when the HR reading goes blank)? One would think that it would exclude those samples from the average, but if it calculates zeroes instead, it should under-estimate, not overestimate.

Many thanks,

Antonio

[Citroen]

Any thoughts? Which is more accurate?

You watch is more accurate.

The PM3/PM4 simply records the instantaneous HR at the end of each split sums them and divides by the number of splits.

So if you row 1K you'll get 5 HR readings at 200m, 400m,... etc.

The exception is if you pick 2K from the standard list of pre-defined pieces, that always has just four splits at 500m, 1K, 1.5K and 2K.

[Bob S.]

Unfortunately, the average HRs reported by the Polar watch and erg monitor are almost always off by 8-12 bpm.
Any thoughts? Which is more accurate?
What does the erg do w/ the missing data points (when the HR reading goes blank)? One would think that it would exclude those samples from the average, but if it calculates zeroes instead, it should under-estimate, not overestimate.
Antonio

There is no average available from the erg monitor, except for the average over the entire piece. That isn't very meaningful, since it takes a while for the heart rate to get up to speed and, even then, it is just averaging the values at the ends of the splits. As Citroen pointed out, it stores only the last value of each split (or piece or interval). As far as the blank readings are concerned, the stored value for a split would be the last reading that occurred in that split. If the signal is lost for an entire split, I believe that it simply records the last reading from the previous split — if there is one in that split.

On another current thread, there has been some discussion about using either Ergmonitor or RowPro to get the values of the other readings. The gaps are still gaps. The radio signal is not received, so there is no data to store.

It would be interesting to know if the Suunto/PM4 arrangement has a more reliable signal reception record than the Polar/PM3 combo.

Bob S.

[Antonio]

Thanks, guys.

It is hard to believe that what appears to be the split or piece average is really just the last recorded value... One would think that the PM monitor would treat HR like splits/watts/calories and compute an useful/real average!

Kinda cheesy code. Oh, well...

Thank you once again,

A

[c2scott]

The decision to record the ending few seconds average was deliberate.

You can hook up a PC and record the heartrate to a computer and compute your own average if you like. Maybe a feature of RowPro?

-- Scott