Hi Cindy, Here's one girl's opinion - I'm pretty new to endurance, started LDs last year after several years of lots of long rides with my "slow" friends and felt that my 20 year old Arab gelding just wanted to MOVE! He LOVES it, actually looks for ribbons and markers, what a crack up.... anyway, I had no idea how he was doing metabolically speaking, since he'd run til he dropped and at his age I was concerned.
So I invested in an EasyCare ProSport, not the fanciest of models but with hi/low range alarms, recovery timer, backlight and dual readout so you can tell time and heartrate simultaneously. I LOVE it! I do like gadgets anyway, but you do have to practice with it. If you want to get instant readings when you start your ride, you need to put some ultrasound gel on the electrode pads, K-Y jelly would probably work. You can also just wait til the horse gets a little sweaty and it'll start transmitting. It's invaluable in training and I quickly saw the improvement when repeating a trail and hills done before at say 8 mph and bpm of 135,the next week it was 128 bpm, so you know you can up the difficulty or speed, etc... You can determine how long you keep him in anaerobic spikes and then watch him recover to aerobic level, for interval training. When you finish your ride, just push a button to "recovery" and start, it will automatically stop when the heartrate drops to the preset level, I keep mine at 59 bpm. Then you know that your horse drops to 59 in 8 min, 15 sec. at home. It gives you an idea of what is normal for your horse during competition. On ride day, you can anticipate this recovery by slowing to a walk or getting off coming into vet checks when the rate is at, say 70 bpm and know that by the time you get in and start cooling him down, it'll take 5 min. to get under 60 bpm. Have fun and give yourself time to experiment with it before ride day so it's not a distraction and always listen to your horse over the heart monitor if you think anything is "off" with him. Let me know what you think! Diane Vieira PS region LD'er >From: Cindy Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: [RC] heart monitors >Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 00:49:10 GMT > >Cindy Nelson [EMAIL PROTECTED] >I'm looking for info about on-board(riding) heart monitors...does any one >have any experience with this concept and like to share that experience ? >Thanks > >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. > Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
