Well I just went through another Garmin heart-rate strap this month.I love my Garmin Edge 800 gps bike computer and I also love having all my heart-rate stats integrated into my bike computer and easy to access but I have not had good luck with the Garmin heart-rate straps.

Garmin heart-rate strap on my handlebars.

I am on my 4th HR strap now. Fortunately, I was able to replace the first and second ones with the warranties from Garmin so this is really only the second one that I’ve had to buy. I have also followed the instructions and have cleaned the straps after each use and washed with soap and even in the washing machine a few times (as they suggested). Still I have had terrible luck with these things.

I have had no problems with my Garmin Edge Bike Computer or with the HR transmitter that you snap on to the strap, just with the straps themselves. Fortunately, Garmin is great with their warranties which was a factor in why I bought another Garmin strap.

When I was shopping for ANT+ heart-rate straps online the only models that kept coming up were Wahoo, Bontrager and Garmin. Wahoo might be OK but they sounded cheap to me so I was deciding between Bontrager and Garmin. Bontrager has a good name in the cycling world but their strap and transmitter sold for $65 and I could get the Garmin (strap only) for $35.

I almost got the Bontrager because I wanted to try a different brand but my budget is tight right now so I went for the cheaper strap only option from Garmin. If it goes bad before the warranty is up I’ll just get a replacement again. If it outlasts the warranty but goes bad later maybe I will try the Bontrager next time.

Before I got my gps Bike Computer I never even knew that I needed a heart-rate monitor. Now, I am so used to having my HR stats that I almost never ride without it.

BTW: I didn’t have any professional models available for the HR strap photo above  so I enlisted my bike handlebars to model the HR strap and  monitor.

Tour de France Updates

I thought that this would be a good time for this story since the Garmin Sharp team just won the last stage of the Tour de France yesterday. It was another wet and rainy stage yesterday and they had another pile up crash just before the finish line yesterday.

There are always some crashes in the TDF but it seems like this year has been particularly bad. Many of the top riders, including Chris Froome (one of my favorites), Alberto Contador and Andrew Talansky have all been injured and dropped out of the race.

I just looked at my last blog post here and when I posted the leaders at that time (after Stage 4) I thought that the leaders at that time would all be changing throughout the race. Surprisingly (to me anyway) Nibali is still the overall leader and wears the Yellow Jersey and  Peter Sagan still wears the Green Jersey (not a big surprise there). The other top positions have all changed though.

I was hoping to see Tejay Van Garderan do well for the Good ol USA and I see that he hold the #6 position in the overall standings. Not bad. Let’s go for #1 next year though. We need another winner to help get over the Lance Armstrong disaster.

Well, today is the last real racing stage of le Tour so I’ll see how that goes (it could already be over but I do not see the broadcast until later in the day) and tomorrow will be the final stage in Paris. So after this weekend it will be au revoir to le TDF until next year. 🙁

I also just saw that Jack Bauer was in the race this year. I thought that he would just be working security 🙂 He’ll probably end up in position 24! 🙂