The Voice from the Pacific Northwest Newsletter
Electronic
Training Partners
By
Winson Chan
For
a lot of skaters out there, one of the most frustrating aspects
about training is the lack of a training partner or club. It’s
hard to get motivated for a 2-hour solo skate, but many of us
will eventually have to skate on our own. In these situations,
electronic devices such as watch, a heart rate monitor, or a
GPS can help motivate you, and improve the quality of your training
session.
At
the very least, you should have a watch, preferable a stopwatch
to time your skate. I often skate on a 2km loop, and I aim for
5 minutes per lap during a long endurance skate and down to
4 minutes per lap if I’m doing intervals. I also check my time
on the second corner to see if I need to speed things up to
reach my target time for the lap. If you are skating on the
road, choose various landmarks to monitor your split times.
The simple stopwatch provides me with a goal every lap, and
the encouragement I need to push it a little harder when I start
to get tired.
Another
useful tool is a heart rate monitor, which includes a stopwatch.
They start at about $60 and can go over $200 depending on the
feature set. An important part of your training is the long
slow skate, where you stay in between 65% to 85% of the max
heart rate. With most heart rate monitors, you can program an
upper and lower limit, and if you go out of this range, the
watch beeps at you. If you are doing intervals, the next “on”
lap can start when you heart rate falls below a certain level.
If you plan to use a heart rate monitor, do some research on
the Internet or read a book about training with a heart rate
monitor to learn more about the various heart rate training
zones.
My
favorite gadget is my GPS (Global Positioning System), it monitors
and records the speed, total distance, and a lot of other information.
I have the Garmin Forerunner 201, it is about the size of a
small cellular phone, and it straps to the wrist. Other GPS’s
for skating / running / cycling include Timex and Navman. The
ones from Garmin, have a big display for speed, total distance,
time and a lot of other information at the touch of a button.
My favorite feature is the auto lap timer, which will automatically
record your time every km or any other distance you set. It’s
great when I do a long skate on the 2km loop, without pressing
a button each lap, the GPS will record the time for every lap.
I also find it useful when I do long city skates, I just skate
for hours and it’ll keep track of how far I skated. Unfortunately,
a GPS will not work indoors, and may be inaccurate in areas
shaded by trees or tall buildings. Most models allow you to
download the information to a computer afterwards. Models with
heart rate monitors are particularly interesting because when
you download the information, you can see what your heart rate
was at during any part of the skate and see it go up as you
go up a hill.
I
know of three companies making GPS devices aimed towards the
skating / cycling / running market, they are Garmin, Timex,
and Navman. Both Garmin and Timex have models with heart rate
monitors, and Navman has a model specifically for inline skating.
They start at about $100, and go up to about $250. Each manufacturer
has some different features, so I suggest doing some research
before buying.
Since
we all will be skating alone at times, consider getting at least
a stopwatch, I find that it helps. A heart rate monitor is a
must if you want to fine-tune your workouts. I think of my GPS
more as a toy, it does help when I’m skating on my own, and
being a bit of a geek, I like analyzing the data after a workout.
Don’t forget to have fun skating, and skate safe!
Winson
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