Well, since I have now been using my HRM (Heart Rate Monitor) for years, I decided to purchase a decent bit of gadgetry! So here is some information for anyone out there wishing to purchase the same or similar piece of equipment. It is the Timex 5F011 Bodylink unit - this consists of a Watch, a GPS unit, a data recorder and a chest strap. When you have all these units working together, you can get yourself a load of decent data, if thats what you are after.
It will plot a number of functions, visible as a graph, of which you can choose two pieces of data at a time, from elevation, altitude, heart rate, speed and pace. This is shown (poorly) below:
This and other screenshots can be seen much more clearly here:
The information obtained from the device is pretty smart, as it gives you Raw NMEA data, which can be used for plotting a route such as:
This data can be transferred too, I have only found one site at the moment which is:
After pasting your data into this, you can obtain an image that shows your route as shown via this link:
There are a few other nifty pieces of data that can be used whilst training / after training too.
The basic functions are the ones that are of any real particular interest/importance, and these are available on the watch unit and from the data recorded, which is uploaded after. These of course, are functions like average speed, average Heart Rate, Max HR, time and distance (shown in a link above).
Overall, I really rate the whole system, but it could benefit from a few upgrades / features such as temperature gauge, a cadence link to the bike, smaller or all in one GPS and data recorder, or even better all in the watch! The software could be better - when compared to polar products, Polar seem to have, not specifically better, but more functional software - the inability to move a cursor on the displayed graph at a certain point, to find out specific statistics at that point in time is a bit of a let down, whereas polar have this function already.
And compared to the price I paid, it is now available, much cheaper and certainly a bargain, see here for more details:
So is it useful? Yes
Is it a necessity? No.
Is it a great gadget? Absolutely.
This is a versatile piece of equipment as it stands - no messing about when changing from one bike to another or simply going for a jog etc.
I would highly recommend it and just wish Timex would bring out some nice software udates...
