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Product review Welcome to the Product Review section of the  Run with Sam site.  Each month we will review a running or exercise product  and give you the low-down. If you would like me to review  a specific product, please contact me here. Click here for product review archives. January 2002 Polar 610 review - by Brendon Downey, Sports Physiologist Heart rate monitoring is a useful tool that athletes and coaches can use to determine the effectiveness of training and help with the management of training loads.  A lot of useful concepts with monitoring heart rates have been either time consuming (you had to do it by hand) or expensive (you had to buy the most expensive heart rate monitor and purchase additional software and hardware.  Thus, many helpful measures have been out of reach -until now.  The Polar 610 opens up a lot of doors in this regard.  The addition of software with the watch and many of the build in features allow, competitive sportspeople the opportunity to utilise the benefits of the information, information that was generally only available to elite athletes and coaches. Polar 610 - a must have tool for the serious athlete Basic Training Setting of zones is going to be the key option available to determine correct intensity. To use this option to it's fullest potential requires the correct setting of training zones.  You need accurate information about your training zones and sound information about how much training you need to do in each zone. If you don't gather the correct information than you won't set the correct zones and then using a heart rate is not going to be any better than not using one, in fact it could be worse. With the 610 you can tailor your training zones for different workouts (you can store 5 on the watch and more via the software). Usually changing zones (for different sessions) is a little time consuming but you can do it all via the software and your computer and upload the information to your watch.   In any case you can change between training zones whilst running. Warm up, steady running, intervals, warm down. Measuring Change You can use your monitor to determine effectiveness of your training. By having some sort of measure of change in speed verus heart rate you can look and see how your training is going.  Here is how: When you do base training, most training will be in the easy zone. Therefore you will find that when you retest your lower speed heart rates will drop, but your upper speed heart rates (including racing heart rates) may not drop or drop less. See the table below. When you enter the specific preparation phase and undertake more race specific training your racing heat rates will drop but low speed and upper speed hear rates could go up, not drop or will drop less. See the table below. Date Phase 12km/hr 14km/hr 16km/hr 18km/hr 10/4/00 Base (Early) 130    140 150 160 13/5/00 Base (Middle) 120  132 144 156 7/6/00 Speed (Middle) 120 127 142 154 6/7/00 Speed (Peak) 118 123  135 150 Base(Early) to Base (Middle) biggest drop at easy  training pace (12km/hr) Base (Middle) to Speed (Middle) biggest drop at  moderate training pace (14km/hr) Speed (Middle) to Speed (Peak) biggest drop at  racing pace (16km/hr) Of course if you find in base training that your racing heart rate zone is the one improving the most this tells you that you are training too hard.  Therefore you can use that information to reduce this intensity zone and thereby peak at the correct time and avoid overtraining. A Polar 610 is ideal for this as you can use the software provided to overlay training sessions over one another and see this. You can't do that with the software provided with the S410 so this is a good reason to upgrade to the S610.  I used to do this graphing by hand, then I was doing it with the old 2.1 software, now it is going to be a lot quicker with a S610 and the new software. A key feature with recording and review is that you can upload several sessions at a time and with the larger capacity (22hrs at 5sec) you are unlikely to run into problems even if you are away from your computer for a week or more.  This is a set up from the S410 and this feature will be useful for a lot of athletes who will review training at the end of each week. OwnIndex The Own Index concept allows you to measure a change in VO2max (general cardiovascular fitness).  Does it work?  Polar believe that they have the results to prove it.  Basically they work off the idea that there is a variability of heart beat to beat interval at rest. The fitter you are the lower and the more variable your resting heart rate is.  This concept was first introduced for the M series but seemed to overestimate VO2max scores for athletes (The M series was developed for general fitness).  They have adjusted the equations for the new S series and believe that the watch will give more accurate scores for VO2max now. OwnIndex will change day to day depending on how tired the user is. In theory this could be a useful tool in determining 'over reaching', and that should help avoid overtraining (long term over reaching).  To do so you would perform the OwnIndex everyday at the same time.  A sudden dip or a continuous period (say 4 days) with low scores while training would be a warning sign.  You could use this to replace your usual resting heart rate test. I undertook a few tests on myself scoring 69, 70, 70 over three days, then I trained hard for three weeks, and got obviously fitter (but a little more tired) and I scored 69 (I was fitter but tiredness cancelled out the gains), then I rested for 4 days and scored 72. I think that it is pretty close to my actual VO2max as well, I have had several tests done on myself over the years.  In any case if the number goes up when getting fitter and down when getting less fitter then it is going to be useful for monitoring training. Race and Time Trial Evaluation With the software and watch you can easily evaluate your racing and time trial performance. By using the split option and marking points on a measured course. Like every 1km in a 10km run, you can determine split times and associated heart rates . With the software you can record the workout graph, select a section and calculate best heart rate for future racing as well as ideal race pace.  This is not a new feature but it is all a lot easier to undertake with the S610 than with the previous heart rate monitors.  You can also use this information to help tailor your training sessions. By using the software's heart rate distribution function you can get an idea of the spread for intensity in a race. Then when you want to do race simulation you can set up the work out to be similar (although your training heart rates will be lower throughout due to the lack of race adrenaline). The AIS used race data in this way to help develop their sport specific test for Mountain Biking. Email coaching This watch is ideal for internet coaching. You can download this watch via the software and connection. The software that comes with the watch allows you to graph sessions quickly.  I have used this function for monitoring training time trials (to advise athletes about correct intensity and pacing), hard training sessions, long sessions (usually to check these are done slow enough) and also for racing.  Files are very small, typically only a few k so take only seconds to download. I find this particularly helpful for Cycling, Marathons, 1/2 Ironman and Ironman events.  This information is better than a simple average heart rate. From a programming perspective this allows me to check what was done against what was programmed (not always the same!).  Also an average heart rate can hide sessions where some running was done too hard resulting in slowing down at the end. With this information I can adjust up coming training, either distance, specific components or the intensity (heart rate) as well as provide athlete with feed back that they can see themselves and use for future reference.  It is too much information for me to do this for every session and in my opinion not necessary, but I find it great for those key workouts each week. Summary So who would buy the S610?  It comes down to features.  If you want to be able to record your training and races and save multiple files in more detailed than from the S410 then the S610 is for you.  The Polar Software is superior for analysis of heat rate data than the PC Coach. A must have serious tool for the competitive athlete and coach. For further information pleased send me an e-mail here: bdowney@runwithsam.com. Brendon Downey Sports Physiologist Ph: 617-55 00 9830 Fax 617-55 00 9831 www.brendondowney.com