Anyone use a heart rate display maybe secured to the rigging of their kayak? I have monitor and fitness apps and whatnot but I need a way to see it in real time. I overtrained (again) this year and need to take time off (again).
Going forward I absolutely need to make sure almost all my time exercising is zone 2 or fat burn with the occasional very high heart rate maybe 1-2 a week. Kayaking seems to get my HR even higher than cycling so I may choose paddling as my interval type training when going hard. But I need to see this data because I have a nice boat and its so easy to get that leg drive and get carried away.
Anyone use some waterproof display I can just connect to my rigging? Any recommendations for like a Bluetooth device I can sync with my HR monitor?
Do you need something in front of your face to watch constantly? Would seem to take the joy out of paddling for me. I have an apple watch and you can see your heart rate if you break cadence and glance at your wrist, I assume you already have a monitor like that. I discovered that kayak surfing gets my heart rate way up, it’s not the surfing, it’s the paddling out through the big winter dumping surf that does it.
My Garmin watch has alerts that can be set (tone and/or vibration), so I know when I go in or out of my target zones. I realize it isn’t what you asked for, but it’s another approach to the same thing.
I have seen some chest band monitors that run to an app connection and some that run on Bluetooth.
If you phone is waterproof, you can mount it at the front of the cockpit where it will be easy to see. If it isn’t there are clear dry bags and storage boxes you could use to keep it dry.
Tried using my garmin watch but its hard to keep an eye on it. I would think Garmin might have a remote display or something of the sort.
At this point I need heart rate because I keep overtraining and having to take time off my sports. I do lots of things its the problem. Got away with it for years because I was really only biking or kayaking an hour at a time here or there maybe sometimes longer but not often. Now can do very long rides or paddles, group rides, centuries and that’s when the trouble began.
I need my workouts to be mostly easy (zone 2) and the few that are difficult I need to absolutely KILL it. This is the best way to gain fitness. So far I am struggling at best.
I use a Wahoo handlebar GPS (the Element Bolt) for biking. It integrates with a chest-mounted HR monitor and you can customize the display to highlight your choice of numbers very large (with color-coding for above or below your zone).
The mount would be easy to ziptie or to set up something snazzier.
I’ve considered setting up a mount at the front of the cockpit; for now I don’t need live data so I just tow the boat to the shore and then pop it into my dry bag in the bow hatch, so I wind up with “rides” like this:
You can probably find a version 1 Bolt for cheaper than the current V2, but the V1 isn’t as waterproof. (That is the other part of why I keep the V1 in the dry bag.) Anyhow, happy to talk further about the wahoo setup; it’s not perfect (and not exactly cheap) but it’s done exactly what I want it to do on the bike and i could see it working out well on the boat, too.
