My new toy

Santa loooooooooves toys. Especially toys that beep and record superfluous data. So when I asked Santa for a heart rate monitor, sans bells and whistles, I should have known better. Turns out that not only is Santa an alpha-nerd, but his bike buddies include the head of physical therapy at a major university and several senior Olympian cyclists. I can see them at their favorite cafe midway through their Sunday bike ride drinking cappacinos, nerding out, and throwing down all the latest stats for HRMs on the market.

So here I sit with this fancy gizmo that wraps around my chest and synchs up with a watch the size of Paris Hilton's engagement ring that synchs up to my computer via infrared lightbeams. It beeps a lot when I hit the buttons. The backlight is not in the same league as Indiglo however. It has a cute little bike icon when it records my HR. It comes with installation software and an instruction manual obviously written by a man. That is to say, the instructions go no where and never answer my questions. Finally after two days I figured out how to set the date and time. Getting the HRM to actually record my HR was surprisingly more simple than the date and time. I even downloaded the data to my computer in minutes. HaHA! A graph! The numbers go up and down and across. Figures, numbers, data. I can relate with this. I am to know these numbers and learn their patterns so that I can unleash my potential. But for now, I play.

I wore my new toy to last night's Thursday night ride. I wonder if Polar ever anticipated people monitoring their HR while they downed mulled wine in the rain or played tandem footdown or waited for their friends at Dicks or threw darts whilst drinking nasty PBR. Yeah I don't think so either. But herein lies my graphing of +7 hours of being strapped into my HRM:



A few peaks of exertion interspersed with lulls of libation. Pay no attention to the elevation. I still have to figure out how to reset that. Shouldn't be so hard to do since I live at fucking sea level, but I'm sure it will beep a few times to tell me what a moron I am.