Crane Heart Rate Monitor

Background

When I cycle to work, which is a roughly 15 mile ride each way, I always find the first 5 miles pretty tough - I put this down to things like still waking up, muscles are warming up, body is cold etc. The next third of the ride ends up feeling like a good cruise and the final third usually ends up with a push mentally because I know I'm nearly at the end of my ride - normally that but in the middle is the way it is because I want to pace myself and not risk burning out because at each end of my journey (maybe more so on the return journey) there are some large climbs which I need to have the energy to take on.

This "effort profile" makes sense, but I do wonder - have I got more I can give than I think? At the moment my analysis is limited to looking at my average speed profile. When I look at my profile at the areas where my speed is significantly lower than my average (check this out as an example - go to "Analysis", then you can effectively replay my ride) you can see that just as I'm going over the bridge is an area where my speed is below average.

So when I cycled home the night of this particular ride above, I told myself "give it your all Chris!!" in an attempt to get my average up - but it got me thinking, is there a better way than just trying to remember my "slow bits"? I think so ...

The Theory

When I'm in my middle portion of my ride, circa 20-30 minutes after leaving home I believe I've warmed up and that my body has switched over from burning sugars to burning fat for energy which is why I always feel like this is a good cruising period (whilst still bearing in the back of my mind that I don't want to push too hard, I've still got 10 miles to go!), I wonder - am I cruising, or am I just crawling along in terms of what I'm capable of? Looking at average speeds, I'm certainly not slowing down, but what about knowing what my body is capable of? How do I measure how hard I'm working?

Here's where you start hearing phrases like "lactic threshold" and "VO2 max", but I want to keep this simple for now (I know I'm good at overcomplicating things!) so to measure my workload, I decided to investigate a Heart Rate Monitor (HRM).

HRM Key Features

ANT+? Bluetooth? What the heck? ANT+ and Bluetooth are both communication technologies. Both very popular. ANT+ is actually a proprietary technology owned by Garmin, which theoretically could cause compatibility issues, but it really doesn't. ANT+ is extremely popular in cycling computers etc, and even smart phones. My Samsung S3 doesn't have ANT+, but it does have Bluetooth. Most cycling computers such as the Garmin 500 will have both ANT+ and Bluetooth so you can probably mix-and-match sensors as you build up a collection.

And that's about it! There's not much to a HRM to really worry about!

Crane HRM

I was doing my weekly shop in Aldi when I stumbled across their technology cabinet and saw a Crane HRM on sale. It was on sale, reduced from £24.99 to £17.99 which is shockingly cheap! I did some googling and the jury (The Internet) seemed split on love-hate. There were those that had ultra-high end HRMs that challenge the accuracy of the Crane, but for £17.99 I wasn't that worried about inaccuracies!

Crane Heart Rate Monitor

The only concern I did have was that there were quite a few people complaining that they couldn't get it working and that some had to use the Crane Connect app. I can happily report that I had no issues, connected first time and I'm not even using the Crane Connect app!

To connect the Crane HRM to Strava so that it will record the heart rate data during the ride, fire up the app on your device, then go to Start Ride. Before pressing the record button, go to the settings. Then enable Bluetooth sensors. You may have several options here - for the Crane HRM you need to enable Bluetooth v4.0 and ensure the Heart Rate Monitor is ticked.

It would be rude to not get out on the bike straight away to test it out, so that's precisely what I did! I literally did a lap around the estate to see if it would record the heart rate data and the ride simultaneously and it did!

No issues what-so-ever!

Issues however have been seen when I go on a longer ride. You can see in the image below, at about the 30 minute mark the HRM suddenly fails by providing a constant HR output.

I suspected that the battery may be at fault as the battery being used is the same one since I purchased the HRM in October 2015, so approximatley 6 months later its not unreasonable that the battery could have died. So I undertook another ride, with a fresh battery, but again, at about 29 minutes the HRM output fails and locks to a constant output.

Conclusion

I've been on a couple of rides with it now and I'm chuffed with it. The strap is all one piece rather than having a buckle or latch and its a fabric strap which is nice and comfy. The sensor and transmitter are nice and small, I didn't have any issues with it digging in on any ride. It does feel quite weird to start with, almost like its slipping down (but not).

I've steered away from the Crane Connect app because I don't want to risk upsetting the connection I've got working between the HRM and Strava, so I can't comment on the apps functionality.

Now I will be using the HRM with Strava mounted to my handlebars so that I can see what my heart rate is doing, that way when I'm in my "middle third" of my commute and cruising when I look down and see that my heart rate is low, I can safely say to myself that I'm not working hard and so I can wind it on a bit.

On my initial short rides, the HRM worked perfectly, but on my longer rides of nearly 90 minutes the HRM would drop out. Currently I have not worked out why the HRM is failing after about 30 minutes, I will be contacting Crane technical support to try and work out why the problem is occuring, however until that time, I feel unable to recommend this product.

This is a shame, when it works, it is fantastic, but its just not been reliable for me yet.

NOT RECOMMENDED BY CYCLE INTO THE FOLD!