I HAVE HAD AN AVERSION to talking machines, since forever.  Mechanical, synthetic "speech" is not merely intensely irritating (to me), it seldom if ever provides information that I don't already have, or can't easily get, from some alternate medium.

For years, I've had (and used, intermittently) a heart rate monitor.  For me they're a way to objectively quantify the "difficulty" or exertion level of a spin; perceived effort is a dubious and highly unreliable guide.

I don't generally wear the monitor when riding "for real" because that's not the purpose of a ride.  Rides are supposed to be for enjoyment, or transportation.  Reducing them to mere "workouts" - exercise for its own sake, logged and quantified in "performance metrics" - eliminates nearly all of the fun and relaxation aspects and substitutes toil and drudgery.

Riding competitively is not now, and has never been, my bag, so all of the work and suffering that go into training for "the big race", are not necessary in order for me to meet my own objectives.  That in turn eliminates any need for, or value in, collecting heart rate, average speed, "lap" times (time to travel a mile), and other data oriented toward improving one's competitive performance.

None of that is to say I am oblivious to, or uncaring about, the health and fitness aspects of cycling in any form.  It's simply that none of it is my primary objective, and so the metrics are quite beside the point.

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Still, from time to time I've worn the heart rate monitor while out riding as well as on the spin bike.  In doing so I've hoped to be able to relate, say, an hour of spinning at an average of 5 calories a minute to ten miles of steady riding around town.  But I haven't done it consistently enough to really develop that comparative profile.

This past winter my old monitor stopped communicating with the companion phone-based app that reports the data to me.  It (the monitor strap/data sender unit) still talks to the electronics on my spin bike but is no longer visible to my phone.  Yesterday I discovered an as-yet-unused gift card that nearly covered the cost of a replacement monitor, so I splurged and went for it.

Out of curiosity I wore the new unit on today's outdoor ride, to begin generating the data for some basis of comparison: what benefit do I get from an easy 13 mile ride versus what do I get from the spin bike?  It'll be interesting (to me), and perhaps even mildly informative and helpful, to be able to equate the two formats.

A few minutes into the ride I was slightly startled when my phone announced the distance traveled, time taken, "lap time", and average heart rate.  It also announced each time I crossed the line from "fat burning" to "improving fitness".  My immediate reaction was to "shut that dratted voice off" but it's not possible to do while an activity session is in progress.  So I let it go, getting updates every mile and every time my heart rate transitioned across that invisible threshold.

I don't think I'm going to want to hear those announcements every mile of the way from Bend to Rockville this summer.  In fact it's likely that the monitor strap will stay home, rendering the app useless and mute, although I might bring and use it at least sometimes, out of sheer curiosity.

But if I do, I'll silence that dang mechanical voice.