Why? Most doctors seem set up to dispense very generic fitness advice: if your health is decent but you're not sufficiently active, they'll tell you to try and do some moderate fitness activities. Take walks, ride your bike, take the stairs rather than the elevator. Most doctors seem set up to dispense this kind of advice.
To top it all off, most doctors I've met with are not overly athletic folks. Ok, maybe they're not fat, and may even be fairly thin. But do they engage in intense athletic activities? Do they have a strong competitive drive when they do fitness? If they don't, I question how capable they will be in dispensing advice to those who are competitive.
I, for example, have yet to find a doctor who can give me meaningful advice about what I'm doing, at my age, for fitness. I can tell them I ride hard when I'm on my bike, but what does that mean? I went up a hill, riding as hard as I could? I submit that, if the doctor has not him/herself done some competitive athletics, they're not going to have much of a clue about what I, as a sometime competitive bicycle racer, mean when I say 'm riding hard.
The heart rate monitor is meant to help me communicate to them better what I'm doing. "You know, doctor, my heart rate on my two-hour ride yesterday was averaging about 135 beats per minute (bpm hereafter). I went up to 165 bpm and sustained that for about five minutes at one point, though." I hope by presenting the matter in those terms I might get some helpful input.
Which brings me to my results so far. I've actually only used the monitor on a couple of rides and on one upper-body workout session so far, and the results are interesting. I got a less expensive model, by the way--the Nike Triax C5 (ca. $49.00, shipping included, ordered through Amazon), a picture of which I'll include below.
I have to say that, preliminarily, I'm happy with this monitor. It's true that I don't have much to compare it with and that I've barely used it. But stay tuned to find out whether I continue to be satisfied with it.
As you can see, it looks like a wristwatch. And, as the photo indicates, it does tell time. But its significant function for my purposes is to read heart rate. It does this by wirelessly transmitting, from a corresponding strap you put around your chest, your heart-beat rate to the watch, which can be set to display that information. I will likely do a more in-depth review of this monitor in a future post.
Results so far. 120 bpm is a pretty comfortable rate for me: I feel like I'm hardly working at that rate, really. 150 bpm is a vigorous work rate, but one I can fairly easily sustain. I hit 160 bpm+ by the top of a long hill. Once I get to 170 bpm or so, I'm reaching the point where I start to go into oxygen deficit. I.e., I can hit that rate and sustain it, but my heart and lungs are just about at the point where they can't keep up with my leg muscles' demand for oxygen. Finally, on a particularly intense, but short chase, hit 190 bpm this past Saturday (and that at about the 55 mile mark of our 66 mile day!). I think my heart rate can go yet higher than that, but so far 190 bpm is the highest I've seen.
Now, contrast that with the heart-rate poster that hangs in our building's exercise room. There it says that the maximum heart rate for a 50 year old is 175 bpm. Well, I can tell you that I've exceeded that by quite a bit and lived to tell about it. Maximum heart-rate calculators found on the internet also tell you that, for a 50 year old, 170-175 bpm is supposed to be the maximum.
But according to my experiences so far, that's hogwash. And it seems there is plenty of information on the internet that calls into question the standard formula for calculating maximum heart rate as well. See the following link, for example: http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/max.htm . There is also a New York Times article, published on April 24th, 2001 in the Health section, entitled "'Maximum' Heart Rate Theory Is Challenged."
So, once again I'll be using myself as a guinea pig. I'll keep track of my own heart rates, discuss these with my doctor, and try to determine whether there are any principles that apply to aging and fitness--one of the main interests of this blog. Now, on to other concerns.
We did a 66 mile day this past weekend, so we continue building up mileage. A little stiffness and soreness developed in my left knee, so I'm a bit concerned about that. I would have guessed, if a knee problem were to crop up, it would be in my right knee, since my left foot is a little differently aligned to the knee than on my right leg (owing to a bad sprain I had in my right ankle as a kid). But it's actually my left knee that's started bothering me. Anyway, something I'll be keeping tabs on as cycling season continues.
As a final topic for this entry, I'll just mention that I've discovered how to use google's MyMaps. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's something with great potential for cyclists. One of the really nice features is that you can draw lines wherever you want (you're not limted to following roads). In combination with Satellite view, this enables cyclists to trace out routes that follow bike paths instead of roads, and to easily calculate mileage. I'm highly pleased with and enthused about this.
I have to say, though, that I've had a few issues. One is that the mileage calculator that follows the cursor as you trace out your map can interfere with your view of the map: couldn't they make this thing more transparent? Someone dropped the ball a bit on this issue. Likewise, I've created two maps which start and end in the same place, but take differing routes to get there (except the last 8 miles or so). Well, it seems that the last 8 miles of one or other route keep getting cut off. I've tried correcting this by re-extending the adumbrated route, but when I did that, the other route got shortened by 8 miles. Go figure.
There are obviously still some bugs that need to be worked out of this system, and some interface improvements are needed. But what I've seen so far looks really promising. Anyway, see below a sample map I made up to demonstrate some preliminary results (the red lines represent bike paths while the blue lines represent city streets):
View plank rd clinic <--> cedarburg in a larger map
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