It's a balmy 60 degrees in Brighton, MA, which is practically desert weather here in New England. This is the first day in a long time when I've been able to run outside. I get excited because that means I get to use one of my two favorite gadgets of all time: My Timex Heart Rate Monitor and Garmin Forerunner 305.
I've been training with a heart rate monitor for several years now. If you calculate your maximum heart rate as well as your target heart rate zone here, it will give you a clear idea of how many beats per minute (BPM) you should have when you're working out. A cardio workout will not be as effective if you're not training within your target heart rate zone. All too often, I see people engrossed in their music, reading stacks of People or US Weekly magazines while thoughtlessly exercising on the elliptical machine. Ideally, for a cardio workout, you want to be between 65%-85% of your maximum heart rate.
A heart rate monitor like this one, will help you gauge how hard you're working making your time at the gym a lot more effective. This particular one, found out here on Amazon, will monitor your BPM as well as the percentage of your maximum heart rate. At the end of your workout, you can see how many calories you burned (and calculate how much you can afford to cheat on your diet for the balance of the day).
The Garmin Forerunner 305 is probably one of the coolest things I've bought in the past 5 years (next to the iPhone of course). Equipped with GPS technology, it can tell you how far you've run and how fast you're running. It's a great tool to use when training because it logs all of your past runs and you can see if you're getting faster along the way. I always get jokes like, "Does that thing cook pizza as well?" or "Are you watching TV on that thing?", but it's pretty amazing. It also comes with a chest sensor strap with a built in heart rate monitor. I bought mine here for significantly less than the retail price.
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