We've got a Garmin forerunner at work, which I borrowed the other day for a ride. I don't usually ride with a heart rate monitor, so I don't really have any context for what I've got out of it...
As you can see I was out about an hour and live up a hill. The end of the graph shows the start of recovery. Away from the ends of the ride things were gently undulating and elevation and heart rate go up and down together. It was a brisk ride (road, night, mountain bike with only a couple of red traffic lights), but not a race and I didn't fall over at the end from exhaustion. My computer battery had died and the forerunner was awkward to read while riding, so I didn't have any gadgets prompting my pace.
I'm 37, at the higher end of normal weight. My resting heart rate doesn't go much below 80 (something to deal with by riding more often methinks). A couple of weeks ago my GP said he was "envious" of my blood pressure. I was quite surprised by how high my heart rate went on this ride as the rules of thumb had me thinking my maximum would be around 185.
Those of you that use these things regularly: is that kind of heart rate variation usual, or will going further be aided by calming down a bit on the hills? Is there anything else I could be reading into this?
As a general observation, the forerunner wasn't very comfortable or useful on the bike and I'm not sure I'd want to be looking at graphs after every ride. However, I am now wondering whether HRM on a computer to pace myself would be useful.