Reviews for Suunto t6c

After many years of coaching, I still am amazed at the number of athletes who train without knowing anything about their heart rate (HR), resting or while being active. While not a perfect measure of ones training intensity, the heart rate is a truly revealing number. Once understood, oneâ??s heart rate can be used to not only guide you toward creating more focused workouts, but also inform you when youâ??ve perhaps done too much (a fate all too common for the A-type personality of your average triathlete).

Ask my wife and she will tell you I have the slightly annoying habit of checking my own heart rate many times at day. The first measure is when I first wake up (and I can tell you those numbers going back nearly 20 years). The second measure is while I am training, irregardless of the workoutâ??s intensity. This is where heart rate measurement becomes even more important is as a tool. Now a devoted spinning student, even my wife can tell me her five heart rate training zones â?? but the trick is what to do with this information once you have it. Meet the Suunto t6 (www.suunto.com/t6), a â??wristopâ?? training manager in every sense of the word.

On a recent trip to New Yorkâ??s Tourneau Time machine (ironically to replace my third Nike sports watch in as many years), I discovered a corner of the store dedicated to a line of multi-function specialty watches I had never heard of (that from a self-proclaimed watch-geek). Suunto (pronounced Soon-toe as far as I know) offers one of the most comprehensive selection of watches for almost every sporting need. From diving watches to sailing watches, and even watches for golfers (the Suunto G6 enables the golfer to check tempo, rhythm, backswing length and club head speed).

For us endurance athletes, there is the Suunto t6, the next generation of heart rate monitors (HRM). In simple terms, a heart rate monitorâ??s usefulness is measured by how easy it is to navigate the various functions. What good is it, if you canâ??t remember how to set the training zones or even access the data collected on your last training run?

For a guy who canâ??t even remember how to empty the memory of his Polar 720 HRM, I found using the Suunto t6 a breeze after a quick scan of the ownerâ??s manual. The Suunto t6 has three basic screen settings â?? Time / Altimeter / Training. It is from these three basic starting points, that things get very interesting indeed.

The Suunto t6 unit can even be paired with a wireless speed sensor (for the bike) as well as a foot pod to calculate running distance and pace. But that is not what makes the Suunto t6 unique. What separates the Suunto t6 from the rest of the pack is the training manager that comes with it. Plug your Suunto t6 into your computer and now you have a desk top coach to help you analyze the data from not only your individual workout, but from your history of workouts. Once you load your personal data (age, height, weight, resting HR, max HR, level of activity, etc), the training manager takes over from there. The Suunto t6 comes with a Training Guidebook, which goes well beyond just teaching one how to use the computer training manager, as it provides a great lesson in sound training philosophies and goes to great lengths to describe the various performance measures in simple enough terms (such as heart rate reserve, respiratory and ventilation rates, oxygen consumption, etc).

At an MSRP of $499 (closer to $449 at many retailers I looked up), the Suunto t6 is a tad more expensive than some of the comparable units from Polar (625, 720, 725, 810) or Nike (Triax Elite). However, having used nearly all of those â??otherâ?? units, the Suunto is certainly more stylish in appearance than the Polar series (I used to always keep my Polar off my wrist and on the bike), and in my opinion far easier to navigate for not only the watch functions, but also those found in the â??Training Managerâ??. No wonder it was voted Best Fitness Gear of 2004 by Men's Health magazine.