Hot wired: Challenge for the heart rate

Recklessly I thought my summer holiday would provide the perfect opportunity to road test Casio's impressive new CHR-100 Heart Rate Monitor sports watch.

The flight to Australia would give me time to make sense of the instruction manual and input the necessary personal data like age, weight, resting and upper/lower target heart rate settings. Then there would be all those sporting opportunities over the following week - last-minute training for the Christmas Day marathon, repeated sprints over hot sand to the cooling sea, the Boxing Day sales, New Year's Eve drinking games and so on.

With the heart rate monitor strapped around my chest and the aerodynamically shaped, fully water-resistant digital watch on my wrist, I would surely perform like a proper multi-sport competitor. Hmmm. Those Aussies are hard to beat on their own soil - just ask South African cricket captain Graeme Smith.

Truth is I've lost a bit of that competitive edge in recent years, but the CHR-100 proved a cool enough gadget to inspire me to fitness-oriented New Year's resolutions.

Heart rate training is one of the most effective forms of monitoring exercise, working on the foundation that the greater the intensity of the exercise, the higher the heart rate.

Battery-operated sensors on the chest strap detect the heartbeat and transmit the information to the watch so you can keep a close eye on the old ticker as you exercise.

This watch combo can do so much that it demands mastery of six different buttons to navigate through its menu - my heart rate climbed every time I contemplated revisiting the manual.

The two-line large/smaller LCD read out and Casio's experience make it easy enough to operate - once you've got the hang of it.

After a workout it can tell you the total exercise time; the period of that within the target heart range, the time in excess of, or under that target; the best lap; average heart rate; even energy consumed. This heart rate/intensity memory can recall such data on 42 runs, or 200 laps/splits, meaning athletes can readily monitor their progress over time and train more effectively.

As a stopwatch/timer it will count forward or back for up to 100 hours, with a cumulative exercise time of 10,000 hours. Twin-timer modes mean you can use one for the high-intensity phase of your workout and the other for recovery periods. It has three daily alarms and can let you know the time in 31 cities worldwide.

The $229 price tag is steep, but will be easily justified by proper athletes needing to monitor their exercise regimes. If my New Year's resolutions hold up, I might be ready for one by next Christmas.