My day kicked off with an interval session, guided by the Garmin Epix Pro’s challenge of the day: an anaerobic sprint session featuring six one-minute bursts at a pace of 4:45 min/km. The insights I gained weren’t new, but today’s experience underscored them so vividly, I felt compelled to share these revelations with you.
- Polar H10 is better than a good oHR only if you add the right amount of moisture (and you’re lucky)
- Apple Watch Ultra is a reasonable sports watch, with good GNSS and oHR
I thought, considering the type of workout that I should wear my Polar H10 instead of my usual Polar Verity Sense or rely on the wrist optical heart rate sensor. I added some water on the strap to make sure I’m not starting with issues my run. Unfortunately, I should have used the ECK gel instead of water .. it has a higher remanence and helps better – it’s not perfect.
In addition to my Epix Pro 51 paired with the H10, I worn on my right hand an Apple Watch Ultra using the oHR just for fun.
During the initial phase of my run, following a 15-minute warm-up, I noticed unusually high heart rate readings on my Garmin, sourced from the Polar H10. While this wasn’t my first encounter with such anomalies, I typically shrugged them off, anticipating that my natural sweat would soon stabilize the readings. Ordinarily, the erratic spikes would settle within five minutes. However, today was an exception; the erratic readings persisted for a full 17 minutes, rendering my Garmin’s statistics for the run wildly inaccurate. I wonder how those errors will affect the subsequent suggestions, the execution score obviously being only 29%.
Looking at the recordings of the HRV, you can also see when the H10 strap had a strange behaviour.
After the H10 was back ok, the intervals were looking fine, the H10 reacts a bit faster but the Apple oHR was very good as well, I can’t complain.
Based on this experience, I need to remember that if I want to have good (predictable) results with my Polar H10 when the outside temperature is below 7-8 degrees, I need to apply a good amount of ECG gel before starting the run. Water (in my case) is not good enough apparently. I’ve seen people complaining about this issue in various forums, for the first mins of their run they had strange values (either high or low), it happened to me in the past, but the memory is still short.
So, remember: moisten your ECG strap before going out for a run, especially if you know you had these kind of issues in the past.
Regarding Apple Watch, it’s a more than decent companion for outdoor activities, the oHR is very good and responsive, the GNSS is very good as well. The distance difference between Epix Pro and AWU were just 10 meters, 8.22km vs 8.23km which is more than acceptable.
For the altitude, Epix does a better job and it’s not the first time when I see that AWU is struggling a bit with the accuracy of altitude measurement … is it critical? Not now in my case, but I would imagine that for a mountain trail could make a difference.
So, is AWU a decent tool for your training? Yes, I’d say yes it is .. at the same time, besides the usual hardware limitations (battery life, using touch screen in rain/sweat) there are still some small inconveniences for the structured workouts execution – the notifications are too verbose (I don’t need a voice in my headphones or watch speaker to tell me in 5 seconds that I’m above/below the target, a powerful beep and vibration is good enough/better) or the screen during the interval could show you that you’re executing interval 5 of 8..unless you have a good memory, you might not know what is coming.
The integration with 3rd party platforms like TrainingPeaks or FinalSurge allows you to plan and track your workouts executed with Apple Watch, making it a decent solution for an active person who appreciates the smartness of the Apple Watch and can live with the limited battery life.
Enjoy your run, and remember, the best gadget is the one that meets your personal training needs while keeping you motivated.
Liviu Nastasa 