Okay, having the HRM working is an interesting thing. I decided to measure my resting heart rate this morning (you’re supposed to measure this immediately after waking up, before you actually get out of bed) to establish a base rate for workouts and to get a handle on my fitness level.

This morning’s resting heart rate: 52 beats per minute (bpm).

To put this into persepctive: the average adult of average fitness (read: one that doesn’t get out too often) has a resting heart rate of 70 to 72 bpm. An elite fitness athlete (and by “elite,” I mean somebody like Lance Armstrong, Bode Miller, Jeanne Longo and others with top-level aerobic capacity) has a resting heart rate around 40 bpm. So my current resting heart rate is pretty good.

I’ll average it out over the next week to get a more accurate number, but I’m happy, to say the least.