So I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting a polar monitor,but one final question: do any of them (625/720/newer stuff) have multiple user profiles? I’d like to set up one for running and the other for cycling, as my zones differ by 10-15 bpm in each discipline. If not polar, is there any monitor with this functionality?
So I’m pretty sure I’ll be getting a polar monitor,but one final question: do any of them (625/720/newer stuff) have multiple user profiles? I’d like to set up one for running and the other for cycling, as my zones differ by 10-15 bpm in each discipline.
I have the Polar 625 and have HR zones set up for running and biking (you’re not limited to 2). I have something like 7 or 8 zones set up for each sport (Z0 (0 to below Z1), Z1,2,3,4,5a,5b,5c). I specifically identify each breakpoint, but you can do it however you want (% of max, etc).
After downloading the data you just change the workout to cycling if it was a bike ride. Even though you can select the bike features right on the watch, I haven’t found a way to synchronize that with the software so it will automatically select the biking profile when downloading biking data – it always defaults to running (or possibly just the first one on the list.)
I have a 625X watch with foot speed sensor and power sensor (includes cadence and speed as well as power) and haven’t bothered to set anything on the watch other than my weight and the bike settings. I believe the watch has a single set of lower, in range, and upper limits, which isn’t very useful when running and biking, so I’ve just set them all to 0-200. However, as SS points out the polar software allows you to define as many zones as you like (maximum of 10 I seem to remember) for as many sports as you want to define. So once you’ve downloaded the data from the watch you select the correct sport (also haven’t figured out how to get it to know that an hrm file that contains bike-specific data should default to the cycling sport rather than running one) and your time in the sport’s zones is calculated.
I also use trainingpeaks.com and it also does a great job of calculating time in the sport-specific zones. For the bike data I upload from the watch to cycling peaks as that has much better power analysis tools than the polar software.