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Scary thing happened on my ride tonight...
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A scary thing happened on my ride tonight.

Because it gets dark so early now, and I got off a little late, I took a different route than usual. At about the mid-point of my "detour" I noticed my Polar HRM/Cyclecomputer was all zero's. When I tried to scroll through the read-outs I'd get a reading for a second (which was way high or low) and then it would go back to zero's. I kept playing with it until I realized that I was riding directly under two huge high-power lines that lead to some huge refineries. Thinking that might have something to do with it, as soon as I was able to I turned off the road and within a minute or so of riding perpendicular to the lines my data came back! Unfortunately I had to get back on the "power" road to continue my ride and of course my data zeroed out, but when I finally turned off the road for good, within a minute all my data came back.

It just got me thinking...

Has that happened to any of you before?

___________________________________



http://irondad06.blogspot.com/

http://irondad.blogspot.com/




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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [IronDad] [ In reply to ]
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Of course your Polar jammed. Why would that be scary? It happens to me all the time, usually around these Invisible Fences people have for their dogs. These kick my displayed speed up to 64 mph or so.

Don't tke the readings so seriously. HRM is a tool.
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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [ajfranke] [ In reply to ]
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I was scared because my heartrate showed zero on the HRM, so I thought my heart had stopped beating and I was going to die soon!

Come on Art... I'm not THAT stupid.

In two years and I guess about 4,000 miles on this bike that had never happened. Of course I had never ridden near high-power lines either. I just got me thinking about all the things I had heard about the effects of high-power lines. What I thought was scary was that their effect was enough to completely disable my HRM/Cyclecomputer, and that I had to get quite a distance away from them for my data to come back.

I was curious as to whether that was normal, or perhaps these were some HEAVY DUTY power lines!

(by the way... I'm lovin' how the new stem looks!)

___________________________________



http://irondad06.blogspot.com/

http://irondad.blogspot.com/




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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [IronDad] [ In reply to ]
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I've got the 710 and that has happened to me lots of times, high power lines or radar sites around Fort Bragg or Pope AFB used to casue it all the time. I hit 273 MPH one time.... :-) boy I was flyin....

you can use the polar software to remove all the error spikes after you download data from watch.

Jim
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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [IronDad] [ In reply to ]
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I usually have this problem when I cross or ride along a railroad (in Switzerland railroads are always electrical).

There I get glitches for the HR above 200 and speed above 100km/h. I really regonised this after i got my Polar S710 where I can see HR and speed for the whole trip.

Felix

http://www.weilenmann.ch.vu
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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [IronDad] [ In reply to ]
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[reply]...It just got me thinking about all the things I had heard about the effects of high-power lines...[/reply]

Yes, it's creepy how they cause the lights in your house to illuminate the darkness! ...I'm just kidding! Seriously, though, think about it this way: An MRI machine is designed to diagnose physical problems and through repeated clinical trials and decades of use has shown no side effects (except for the occasional bout of claustrophobia prior to the use of newer "open" machines). Not only is the magnetic field of an MRI machine orders of magnitude greater than that of even 100kVA lines as they leave a power plant or sub-station, but you are also 10-15 times closer to the source of the field, since those power lines were 40 feet above your head. The only difference is that the field around power lines is constant and that of an MRI is alternating. But since you were in motion, the field you were seeing wasn't constant either, so even that can't really be argued.

Besides, electronic equipment is tens of thousands of times more susceptible to electro-magnetic radiation than the human body is and your HRM is not shielded in the least. It actually probably kept on working without skipping a beat, no pun intended. But the communication between the chest strap and computer looked like noise compared to the bigger field of the power lines, so it showed you that instead.
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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [IronDad] [ In reply to ]
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>just got me thinking about all the things I had heard about the effects of high-power lines



I'm betting most of what you've heard about those effects is bullshit. Don't fear the EMF.



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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [pyker] [ In reply to ]
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When I am in my white (Turbo car) my Polar reads 240bpm full time and changes lower with RPM on occasion. When I am in my other (NA car) my Polar reads fine - as long as I am not playing a CD - weird.



Other than that - invisible fences, power lines, solar flares and damn near any other thing will mess with them.

----------------------------------------------------------

What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about?
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Re: Scary thing happened on my ride tonight... [IronDad] [ In reply to ]
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I ran on the gym treadmill last night after two weeks of no training (had a nasty cold). I forgot my HRM. I was feeling great, happy to be running again, so I grabbed the little metal hand-rail HRM thingies on the treadmill. It said my HR was 63. While I was running about a 9:00 pace. Odd, I thought. No one was near me so I doubt it was interference from someone else's strap. A few minutes later, I tried again. 65. Heh heh. I'm sure the mill's HRM is just busted, but really, I'd like to think I'm just *that* fit!
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