January 9: my Polar RS800sd

this morning I made a steady run. It was supposed to be over in 40', but the air was fresh, so I went on to 60'. It was probably too much because my ankle started to be in pain again. I got a tendinitis during the Christmas period and missed one week of training. In the past 3 days everything seemed going better but the pain is still there. Probably I run too long.

But today I want to write about the Polar Rs800sd HRM. I bought it 1 month ago because my old Accurex was gone. I did not think it over too much to buy a Polar because I already owned 4 of them and they lasted for years under any weather conditions. Today it seems that also Garmin 205 and Suunto are giving a good run to Polar, but I went for a loyalty purchase.
The Polar rs800 is a fantastic HRM: small, compact, many functions. The SW is really useful because you can plan your workout in absolute details, phase by phase and transfer to the watch easily by IRDA.
BUT ... Jesus ... the food pod S3 is anyway still a hassle . I mean, it is small, very light, but the whole thing requires a calibration process that is never over. Also every time you move the sensor from shoe to shoe, you need to calibrate again ...mmm ... the SW does not manage a calibration factor for a specific pair of shoe, so if you have 2/3 pair of shoes (like most of the serious runners) you must input again the calibration once you change the shoes ...
On top of this, the distance displayed on the watch and the one of the SW are sometimes (often) different. A belgian guy made a very detailed study on the reason of so many bugs and errors in the Polar Sx625 and relative S1 pod, but I sincerely hoped that the new S3 would have solved most of them ... still seems that the weak point of old model are unsolved. I will try to figure out more in the next weeks about how to optimize the calibration, etc and I will keep you updated.
For the time being, I can only say that:
- the systems works ok if you have one single pair of shoes and run at steady pace.
- if you make intervals, or fartlek it is much much better to set the sampling rate at 1s or 5s and start your intervals not from still.

If one day I would meet a technician from Polar, I would have plenty of questions ...
- eg: why if you set up the autolap at 1,0km , the SW and the watch gives you a lap distance of 1,03/1,04km ??!! is there anyway to have autolap at 1,0k and get a lap distance of 1,0km ???