New Year's Resolution in June

[StuartDH]

After spending far too long sitting behind a PC all winter (which in Manchester lasted until the middle of last week), I decided to make the best of the summer weather and start an exercise regime of running, cycling, rowing and walking.

I usually find this sort of stuff mind-numbingly boring, but I've found a great way to get motivated - the heart rate monitor. After shopping about for the right type of gadget, I've just bought a Polar F11 (chest strap and watch) and it's outstanding.

More than just simply recording your heart rate, it also runs fitness tests to assess your current condition, logs your exercise sessions and gives you masses of facts and figures to get the most out of taking exercise. After recording your vital statistics and monitoring your health, it acts like a personal trainer and builds a simple schedule of tasks that aim to get you to work at the right level, for the right amount of time, and on enough days each week to really make a difference, but without working too hard.

When you've finished each session you can point the watch at your PC's microphone and it'll squeak and burp for a few seconds to download your data to the Polar website. Then you can login and view all your details on a private interactive calendar and get even more info on getting fit.

With all the advertising hype that surrounds so any products nowadays, it's not often that I buy something that turns out to be even better than I thought it would be, but this little gadget is outstanding and ideal for anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors.

Definitely worth considering if you want to get fit and need something to get you motivated/interested in taking exercise. Best of all, it shows you the subtle differences between going for a walk or going a bit quicker/taking in a few uphill slopes so that can start to work your heart to a level that will really make a big difference to your fitness and health.