How can a heart rate monitor be useful for running? Are you serious?
Monitoring and improving your running is one of the most popular reasons to own a heart rate monitor. Your heart rate monitor knows if you are getting sick or if you have a stressful day at work. It knows if you aren’t getting enough sleep or you worked out too hard last week and haven’t recovered. Monitoring your heart rate is the only reliable (and practical) way to keep track of your fitness level and measure your performance.
First, let’s just be practical. A HRM is practical and easy to use. You can’t stop frequently during your workout to monitor your heart rate. A HRM allows you to know your heart rate anything you look down. More importantly it will track your averages, alert you if you go out of your desired heart rate zone, and accumulate statistics over longer periods.
A HRM can prevent undertraining and overtraining. Undertraining will sabotage your progress- it simply slows your progress. Overtraining will also impede your progress and could also lead to injury. Frequently, a runner’s “slow day” may not be slow enough. If you go strictly by time (your pace for the day) you may be leading right into the overtraining trap. Your heart rate monitor is your “slow day” angel on your wrist.
Convinced that you need one? Which one? There are several HRM’s specifically made for running. To make this a little easier, we’ll break this down into 2 categories: beginning runners and running enthusiasts.
Heart Rate Monitor Reviews for Beginning Runners
If you are a beginning runner (and not a gadget freak) you can benefit from a fairly basic heart rate monitor. These heart rate monitors will have lap/split functionality, heart rate alarms, heart rate zone indicators, and a capability to store your workout statistics. You’ll need those features to monitor your improving fitness and determine if you are over (or under) training. These HRMs are all near $60.
 Timex T5H881 Zone Trainer
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 Timex T5H911 Zone Trainer
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 Timex T5J983 Zone Trainer
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 Timex T5J031 Heart Rate Monitor
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Heart Rate Monitor Reviews for Running Enthusiasts
If you are a running enthusiat (or a gadget freak) you could benefit from a few more features. These heart rate monitors are compatible with footpods and/or have GPS capabilities for tracking your distances. Most of the HRMs at this level offer the capability to upload your statistics to your computer or the Internet. The Garmin HRMs are focused on GPS. The Polar HRMs are loaded with features.
 Polar RS300X Heart Rate Monitor (Orange)
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 Polar RS400 Heart Rate Monitor
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 Men's Forerunner 110 GPS Watch with HRM
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 Women's Forerunnner 110 GPS Watch with HRM
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 Garmin Forerunner 210 HRM
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