After one of the hurricanes came crashing through West Palm Beach last September, some of the production team, already having tickets to go produce a now cancelled conference there the week after flew down to Florida and did hurricane cleanup at the company owners Florida compound (OK, so it's not big enough to be a compound, but it IS in a gated community). While pulling pieces of their lanais (a big screened room covering the pool and hot tub) out of the pool, I noticed my heart rate monitor watch flicker and blank out. I thought the hyper-chlorination of the water had burned it out somehow and left it for the next few months thinking it dead.
I never got around to replacing it (mostly because the flabby ironman, working for a startup, isn't making much money while Mrs. Flabby Ironman finishes up the hours she needs to practice massage therapy in Colorado Springs) but for some reason it popped into my head that I should check the battery. Sometimes it takes a while for me to get around to things, but this morning I brought the watch to work figuring that I'd take it apart and use the voltmeter we have to check the battery. The battery was as dead as it could ever be and I had high hope that the solution would only be $4 instead of $100. Hustling across the bridge to Radio Shack confirmed the diagnosis and a new ticker was put into the watch reviving my heart tracking for $3.84.
You have no idea how happy I was to know that the piece of equipment I was most concerned about having to replace was as good as new with a new battery. I fell in love with my heart rate monitor when I got it. Even more than my cycle computer, it's my main training and race tool. Watching the numbers, I know exactly what I can and can't push based on how my heart has reacted in the past. It's a pretty wonderful human tachometer. Plus, I trust it's calorie counter much more than I trust the calorie counter on my Mtn Bike's computer (though I'm still happy that the $4 cycle computer I bought on clearance at WalMart is working as well as it is).
More posts in a few minutes. I'm thinking of going and running on the treadmill for a bit... speaking of which, I need to write about my first real run of the season the other day.
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2 comments:
Hmm, I just bought a new HRM to replace a dead one, because I needed it quickly for a race, but I really should open up the old one and poke around in its guts... thanks for the push!
Thanks for reminding me that I need to send mine back to Timex. The plastic part of the strap actually burns my skin like a chemcial burn. Does the same to my wife. Timex said they would replace it for free.
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