{"id":12013,"date":"2014-07-26T12:04:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T17:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/?p=12013"},"modified":"2014-07-26T12:04:41","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T17:04:41","slug":"another-garmin-heart-rate-strap-some-tdf-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/?p=12013","title":{"rendered":"Another Garmin Heart-Rate Strap (& some TDF stuff)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well I just went through another Garmin heart-rate strap this month.I love my Garmin Edge 800<\/a> 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\u00a0Garmin heart-rate straps.<\/p>\n

\"Garmin<\/a>

Garmin heart-rate strap on my handlebars.<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I have had no problems with my Garmin Edge Bike Computer<\/a>\u00a0or with the HR transmitter that you snap on to the strap, just with the straps themselves.\u00a0Fortunately, Garmin is great with their warranties which was a factor in why I bought another Garmin strap.<\/p>\n

When I was shopping for ANT+ heart-rate straps online the only models that kept coming up were Wahoo, Bontrager<\/strong> and Garmin<\/strong>. Wahoo might be OK but they sounded cheap to me so I was deciding between Bontrager and Garmin<\/strong><\/em>. 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<\/em>) for $35.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

BTW: I\u00a0didn’t have any professional models available for the HR strap photo above \u00a0so I enlisted my bike handlebars to model the HR strap and \u00a0monitor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tour de France Updates<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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

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

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<\/em>)\u00a0Nibali <\/strong>is still the overall leader and wears the Yellow Jersey and \u00a0Peter Sagan <\/strong>still wears\u00a0the Green Jersey (not a big surprise there<\/em>). The other top positions have all changed though.<\/p>\n

I was hoping to see\u00a0Tejay Van Garderan<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>) and tomorrow will be the final stage in Paris<\/strong>. So after this weekend it will be au revoir to le TDF<\/strong> until next year.\u00a0\ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

I also just saw that Jack Bauer<\/strong> was in the race this year. I thought that he would just be working security \ud83d\ude42 He’ll probably end up in position 24! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[654,10,722],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12013"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12020,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013\/revisions\/12020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/about-bicycles.com\/bike-blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}