First Race With My Omron Fitness Strapless Heart Rate Monitor

Saying I dislike wearing the chest strap of a heart rate monitor is an understatement.  Getting the strap and the sports bra to cooperate together is tough.  Plus on long runs chaffing sometimes happens.  I was given an Omron Fitness strapless heart rate monitor.  I was very curious to see how well it worked since it is a strap on the wrist and not on the chest.  When you program it you put in the length of your stride walking and running for the distance gauge.  Based on your information you program in first it gives you a default length.  Since I haven’t measured this before I just used the default and figured it couldn’t be that far off.  For a test run I wore my Garmin on my left wrist and my Omron on the right wrist because I knew the accuracy of the distance on my Garmin.

My Garmin said I ran 5.37 miles and the Omron said I ran 4.73.  It was a pretty big difference.  This means I needed to tweak and actually measure my stride.  The calories burned said 517 which is relatively accurate for a run of that length, so I was happy to be rid of the chest strap.  I attempted to wear the Omron for a 10k I was running, but you have to be completely still for it to pick up your heart rate and start.  I didn’t do this before I started running and I didn’t want to stop to get a good fit.  That is why the first race I am wearing it for is tomorrow’s Santa Cruz Half Marathon.  I have tweaked the stride distance.  I’m planning to wear my Garmin also so I can check the distance accuracy again.  So excited to run a half marathon and see what is going on with my heart rate.  13.1 has always been to long for me to run with a chest strap, so I have never used my HRM for that distance.

Stay Tuned!!!!!

Do you run in a heart rate monitor chest strap?

I was given the Omron Fitness Strapless Heart Rate Monitor for free, but all opinions are my own.