Garmin Watch vs Android HandyRunner Entry

I had a little experiment to see how accurate the HandyRunner capturing the running information on my Samsung Android Phone.

From the distant point of view, HandyRunner is capturing relatively accurate (see below).

Although the duration captured by HandyRunner is longer, it is because I pressed on the Start button earlier on HandyRunner before the run and  I Stop it slightly later.  Since I do not have a proper arm pouch for my phone I have to start the program first and then put the phone in my arm pouch before the run.  Thus, I would say that duration and pace captured by HandyRunner is pretty accurate.

As for the map captured (see below), both devices are giving me comparable data but the elevation information from HandyRunner is not that nice.

Lastly for the pace (see below), since there's no heart beat monitoring for HandyRunner, there will not be any data captured by HandyRunner.  As observed from the starting and ending pace captured by HandyRunner, that is due to fact that I insert my phone to the pouch before the run.  So, HandyRunner is "accurately" capturing that "slow" start and stop also.

Except for the elevation, I think HandyRunner can be used as replacement just in case I do not have the Garmin watch handy.  Moreover, playing music and having HandyRunner running for the whole run (~1 hour) only consume 4% of my phone battery.

Nice scenery

I like to run at this road very much mainly due to the mist in the morning.  And this morning, the whole road is just fantastic...

What a great way to spend my morning!

My Max Heart Rate

From the recent stress test in medical check up, I was asked to run until my max heart rate using.  Even when I reach my max heart rate, I feel that I can still proceed with the run and my heart rate continue to increase.  So, I started to find out more about the max heart rate calculation of 220-age.

After some search in the internet, I realized that the general formula is the average of all human being regardless of health condition and living habits.  According to an article, the true max heart rate for a healthy man is higher than what is calculated from the formula.

Further search suggested that we can find our own max heart rate.  That is very good.  I followed what is suggested in Runner's World article, Learn to Find Your Max Heart Rate, and come out with my own max heart rate.  It turns out to be 188 bpm, which I think is more accurate.  There's another formula in calculating max heart rate, ie. 205-(0.5*age).  Using the formula will give my max heart rate of 185 bpm, which is close to what I got myself.

So, I will use 188 bpm as max heart rate and 72 bpm as resting heart rate to formulate my training zone target.

Here's the training zone suggested in Runner's World.

Easy Run (recovery zone)
Pace: One to two minutes slower than marathon pace
% Max heart rate: 65 to 70% [148~154 bpm]
Perceived Effort: 3 to 4/easy
Talk Test: Complete conversation
Training Run (aerobic zone)
Pace: Marathon pace or slightly slower
% Max heart rate: 75 to 85% [159~171 bpm]
Perceived Effort: 5 to 6/moderate
Talk Test: Full sentences
Tempo Run (threshold zone)
Pace: 20 to 30 seconds slower than 5-K pace
% Max heart rate: 88 to 92% [174~179 bpm]
Perceived Effort: 7 to 8/hard
Talk Test: A few words at a time
Intervals (VO2 max zone)
Pace: Mile to 5-K pace or faster
% Max heart rate: 95 to 100% [183~188 bpm]
Perceived Effort: 9/very hard
Talk Test: Can't...talk...must...run...