I love to ride my bicycle (LeMond Maillot Jaune, for the curious). When I was young, it was just about tooling around town. When I got older, it became my main form of fitness. When that happens — when you get beyond the “casual rider” stage of bicycling, into greater distances — it’s time for a computer.

Bike computers measure time, distance, average speed and more. Really sophisticated ones can give you all kinds of data, like cadence and trend information, but those are more for the racing crowd.  A good computer for the recreational rider would be the Sigma Sport BC 1606L.

To start with, the Sigma is wireless. That’s what I look for; wired computers require you to wrap the wire around your front fork and up to the computer. Wireless eliminates that, and looks better on your bike.

This has all the basics like total distance, time, current and average speed, etc. A couple of additional things I really like about this are the backlight, which is great for night riders, and the integrated storage chip. The chip stores settings like total distance and wheelsize (wheelsize is important — without knowing that, the computer won’t be able to measure anything correctly). So when you change the battery, it retains all that information. With my current computer, I have to reset all the data every time I change the battery, which is usually once per year.

The Sigma is also reasonably priced. So get off the Internet, and get on your bike!

I’m a fan of both working out and gadgets (you probably already knew that second item.) So, when I find something that combines the two, I’m doubly excited.

For you runners out there who also own an iPod or iPod Touch, you can make your gadget an integral part of your workout. To do that, you need two pieces of equipment; a “Nike+” shoe, like the one shown here, and a Nike+ iPod Sport Kit.

The iPod Sport Kit comes with a tiny sensor that fits into a small pocket near the sole of the shoe (but only those labeled with the “plus” symbol), and a receiver that attaches to an iPod Nano or Touch. As you run, the sensor in your shoe sends workout data wirelessly to your Nano or Touch. It’s a pretty simple setup.

Apple says you can get “workout based voice feedback” on your exercise, along with “Nike Sport Music” content in addition to your regular iPod tunes. As you run, you can get feedback on your pace, distance run, calories burned and so on.

There is a specific Nike+ workout menu for the iPod that manages your workout. You can set up specialized workouts — for instance, a high-intensity 30 minute run, or fat-burning longer run. You can also set specific goals for a run, such as distance, time or both.

When your workout is over, you can then hook up your iPod to your PC or Mac and upload the information to the website nikeplus.com and see the history of your runs. You can see how you compare to other runners, and even challenge other workout warriors to a virtual race. Pretty nifty.

So break out your iPod, get a pair of Nike+ shoes, and get going!

It’s Jan. 11, 2009 as I write this. And the big question is: Have you kept your New Year’s resolution to start getting in shape again? No? Well, then start again, and make another resolution to get a Wii Fit; it will be fun way to get back on your weight-losing, body-shaping course.

Wii, for those you living among the aborigines of Borneo, is a game system from Nintendo that competes most directly with Sony’s Playstation and Xbox from Microsoft. It is the least exciting from a graphical point of view (in fact, they’re almost laughably primitive), but they make up for the lack of eye candy with extremely fun playability, including the use of the controllers to manipulate the characters on the screen.

In other words, you can turn the controller like a wheel if you’re playing a driving game and the car will turn in that direction — unlike Playstation or Xbox, in which you’d manipulate the car via buttons. It’s much more intuitive, and for many people that’s what makes the Wii the superior gaming system (although, of course, their counterparts would disagree, probably strenuously.)

Recently, Wii extended the usability of the system by adding the Fit device. It’s a plastic controller, about the size of a couple of pizza boxes, that sits on the floor and which you stand on. You can then do all kinds of exercises while following the action on the screen, video-game style. It includes running games, other aerobic workouts, strength workouts, balance exercises and more.

My son Patrick recently did the “Hula Hoop” aerobic workout on the Fit at a Christmas party we attended. He wiggled his hips as though he had a hula hoop around them, watching his on-screen avatar mimic his actions. To make it more fun, the characters started tossing hoops at his virtual double, and Patrick had to twist his body so that the hoop would encircle him, as if he were a  stake in a game of horseshoes. It was an eye-opener for me, to see the merging of video games and fitness, and I came away impressed.

Another colleague who has a Fit likes doing the running program. During these frigid January days, I can see a definite advantage to running indoors, without eight layers of clothing. So get a Wii Fit and stop feeling guilty about blowing your New Year’s resolution so soon.

The number 10,000 refers to how many steps you should take in a day to stay fit. And even though you may feel like you surely walk 10,000 steps between your desk and the printer every day, it’s probably closer to 90 steps, and that’s why you need a pedometer — to help you do the math.

Having an inaccurate pedometer is just as bad as having none at all. I once went to a conference in a large convention hall. As a little gift to attendees, the conference host handed out cheapie pedometers that we could use to measure how many miles we walked in a day, as we slogged along from one seminar room to another. A friend and I were comparing numbers, and we realized that we could easily hit the many tens of thousands of steps simply by doing jumping jacks a couple of times. Suddenly, that second brownie we thought we’d earned during breaktime sat heavy in our stomachs.

That’s why I’m curious about the Fitbit Tracker, a new product that launched during Techcrunch 50 and that will be available early in 2009 for $99.

This wireless, wearable gadget automatically tracks and wirelessly uploads data about your activities, such as exercise intensity levels, calories burned, sleep quality, steps, and distance. It’s tiny and clips onto your clothing.

The Tracker uses some kind of motion sensing technology to capture all moment-to-moment physical activity throughout the day and night. It also measures sleep quality to show how many hours of sleep you actually got in the night (vs. tossing and turning). The Tracker displays how you’re doing against goals in the form of an avatar that changes as you advance toward or fall behind in your goals.

The data that’s accumulated is uploaded to a free website, where you maintain your history and track your progress. It also lets you create groups to help spur each other on in your fitness endeavors.

According to the company that created the Fitbit Tracker, it’ll be accurate to about 95 to 97 percent for step-counting. In 10,000 steps, which represents about five miles of walking, you could still be off by around 500 steps at the most. But my thinking is, if you get that close to 10,000, chances are, you’ll still deserve that second brownie.

Many years ago, I had a friend visit from Santa Barbara, and she’d changed since we’d last seen each other. The major focus of her interest at the time was colonic enemas and how cleansing they were. Yuck, right? I mean, how much talking can you do about that subject over glasses of wine before the conversation kind of closes down?

That friend, whom I haven’t seen nor heard from since, came to mind when I caught wind (no pun!) of another similar movement (another non-pun!), this one involving foot spas that promise to “cleanse” your body of toxins. You soak your feet while this device plows ions into the water, and voila! During the process, the water changes color, signifying that the bad stuff is leaving your body, to get thrown out with the bath water.

For $190, the Dual Ionic Ion Detox Aqua Foot Spa Chi Cleanse Machine provides you with the capability to detoxify with the one you love (After all, I couldn’t imagine going into detox with somebody you didn’t love…) and says it performs “internal cleansing with full body purge, [enhancing the] immune system.” Plus, it “inactivates viruses, bacteria, yeast or fungus” and provides “relief of joint pains.” According to the description, you will enjoy “increased energy and reduced stress.”

Best of all, it includes a built-in MP3 player, so you can listen to music while getting healthier (or at least a little cleaner).

As the experts in these matters point out, there’s one born every minute (and many of those end up in Santa Barbara). Personally, if I wanted to see liquid change color to prove that the science is working right, I’d go for a Scientific Explorer’s Tasty Science Chemistry in the Kitchen Kit. After all, I’d save about $170, plus I’d get the chance to make fizzing grape flavor-ade.

Garmin’s known for its global positioning system devices, so it makes sense that the company would include a GPS in its heart rate monitors.

The Forerunner 405 fits in this category. Priced around $350, the Forerunner is loaded with training features for the serious athlete. Regarding basics, it’ll monitor your time, distance, pace, calories and heart rate. Each session (or run or walk or swim) is stored in memory for later review. You can also download that data wirelessly to your computer when it’s in range and turned on, to maintain a workout log.

The silver bezel around the face of the monitor is actually a touchscreen. You use that bezel to make a selection, toggle menu options and change pages. To switch modes, you keep your finger on one of four labeled areas. You put two fingers on the bezel to turn on a backlight. Once you have the display in front of you that you want to maintain, the device allows you to lock it in by pressing enter and quit at the same time.

Because the monitor includes a GPS, you’ll have to wait a few minutes for the GPS satellite signals to be acquired. (The antenna is located between the watch face and the wrist strap. But once that GPS mode is turned on, you can keep track of your route, follow a pre-planned route that others are following, and save the route for later sharing.

This is the first monitor I’ve seen that includes a battery in the chest strap too, which Garmin refers to as the “heart rate monitor”). Also, the wrist device includes a rechargeable battery, another first for me.

If that black color doesn’t appeal to you, the Forerunner also comes in green.

Last, here’s a cool feature: You can race against a “Virtual Partner.” You set the specifics about how fast and far your partner is running and then try to keep up with or beat your competitor. Of course, at the end of the race, you’re the only one who can buy the beer; but then again, with a virtual partner, you’ll also be the only drinking it too.

Oregon Scientific offers a bargain-priced heart rate monitor that includes calorie tracking, which is probably a good fit for somebody who’s new to the whole business of keeping track of beats per minute. As with the other models I’ve written about here, this one comes with a chest belt that sends your heart rate data to the wrist device. You set lower and upper thresholds and the monitor will beep and flash when you’re above or below your targets.

The gadget includes a stopwatch function, though if you take classes where you’re using this device, you’ll hardly need a stopwatch to tell you when it’s time to collapse — you’ll have an instructor bellowing at you to do so.

If you’ve signed up for one of those 24-hour agony walks/runs/bike rides, this monitor includes an alarm function, so that you won’t oversleep during your brief breaks. And it includes a backlight for looking at the numbers in the dark. Also, it’s water resistant up to 164 feet, which means you can keep it on during the water event portion of that next triathlon you’re entering.

Regarding its calorie counting functionality, be prepared to enter data to receive an accurate count. There’s no monitor in the world that can help you with this if it doesn’t know your age and your weight. The instructions, which come on a big fold-out sheet, are pretty informative about how to do this.

Finally, I’m partial to red. This one’s definitely a keeper.

If a $200-plus heart rate monitor is beyond your budget, Polar offers a bargain monitor too, that does exactly what it’s supposed to do — tell you how many times your heart beats in a minute. The FS1 model ranges from $60 to $70 and has “extra large” digits, one button functionality for the simple-minded among us (I count myself in that category), and a watch feature, in case you need to know just how much longer your spin class is going to last.

A couple of reviewers have weighed in on this monitor, and here’s what they say:

Jibreger calls it “easy to use straight out of the box. Perfect for those who want an accurate heart rate reading for an affordable price.” The one weakness the reviewer notes is that you have to wear a chest attachment in order to get the heart rate reading. That’s the band with the signal that stretches around your chest as you work out. The alternative is a monitor that counts beats through your pulse. The chest band does tend to get sweaty, yes, but the advantage of wearing one is that you don’t have to attach the monitor it transmits to to your wrist. You can have it hanging off your handlebars.

microg from AZ points out that the FS1 lets you set lower and upper limits for your desired workout heart rate. The monitor beeps when you hit a threshold telling you you’re in the zone, then beeps again when you’re out of the range you’ve set — when you’re out of the zone.

If you’ve ever heard about the zone, you know that working out at an aerobic pace makes for great fat burning. This is in contrast to an anaerobic workout, where you’re gasping for air and the whole body quakes with agony while it slowly eats up your muscle tissue. The bottom line on this highly complex science that I hardly ever worry about: Aerobic good; anaerobic to be consumed in small doses, say, about 10 percent of your total workout. (I prefer to follow the sweat measure: If I sweat for more than half the class, it has been a decent workout.)

The two essential features that I mentioned in my review of the pricier Polar F55 were readability of the beats per minute on the face of the monitor and the ability of the monitor to continually show BPM without having to push a button first. The FS1 meets both goals admirably.

But since I don’t want to count other monitors out too quickly, next time I’ll look at an offering from a competitor. There are some truly amazing sports tools out there.

Polar heart rate monitors are the ones I’ve used in the past. So let’s look at one that’s less pricey than the Suunto X6HRM but still does the job of counting the number of heartbeats in any given moment.

Two features that are important to me: The numbers have to be big, so I don’t need to wear my reading glasses during workouts in dim rooms. (I take an early morning class, and bright lights and early mornings don’t go together.) Plus, I want the monitor to stay set on the heart rate so I don’t have to push a button every time I need to read my heart rate. There’s nothing more frustrating than to glance down at the face of the monitor to find your BPM and to get the time of day instead. I don’t need a reminder about what time it is. (Besides, if I have to take my hands off the handlebars at 5:45 in the morning to push a button, somebody could end up in the hospital.)

One of Polar’s newest models is the F55, which everybody seems to be selling for around $220 — not so bad compared to the cost of a month’s training with a personal coach. And, my, oh, my, the features it includes!

The package comes with the wrist unit as well as the strap that goes around your torso to transmit your heart rate signal to the wrist unit. Without those, nothing else about a heart rate monitor matters.

But beyond the basics you get such features as OwnCal, which counts and displays calorie expenditures — not just for a single exercise session, but the accumulated calories for a complete training program.

OwnIndex measures your aerobic/cardio fitness in five minutes. This is a useful baseline to know when starting or changing your fitness routine.

U Fit, helps you stay on track to personal fitness goals, telling you how often, how hard and how long you need to exercise.

The OwnRelax is a quick way to test how relaxed your body is. If you’re a person who goes in for power naps or deep breathing exercises, you can now integrate them into your training session with all the vigor of a minister taking tea with a parishioner.

Finally, there’s Polar Body Workout, which provides guidance in strength training — including the count of sets, repetitions and weights recommendations. It’ll tell you how far along you are in the workout and whether your heart has reached the goals you’ve set.

If you haul around one of those postcards that are popular in gym classes showing what a given percentage of heart rate is translated to heartbeats per minute, this monitor does the translating for you. The device displays heart rate beats per minute or percent of maximum.

When the monitor reaches a given goal, it shows you on the display and gives an alarm beep.

You can download the data from the monitor into your computer-based training program via infrared for overall tracking.

The monitor has the capacity to maintain data such as exercise time, time in target zone, target zone limits, average heart rate, maximum heartrate and calorie expenditure for up to 12 exercises.

If you’re a triathlete, the water resistance goes to 50m.

So, is the display big enough? Not in my opinion. The monitor needs to add so much other text to tell you what you’re seeing and doing, that the number that really matters ends up being kind of dinky. And do you have to push a button to read the heart rate? Actually, no, you don’t. It keeps that heart rate front and bottom, even while it’s displaying other data to you. The photo shows 129. That number will stay up there as long as it knows you’re doing exercise, even while everything else above it changes.

So this one gets a one lung rating.

More on another Polar device next time.

Let my heart rate monitor’s untimely demise be a lesson to you. It is dead because that’s what happens when you don’t properly close your water bottle, then jam it into your gym bag, and the water drips all over that oat bar you had opened but were saving for after your weightlifting class. The oat bar turns to mush and coats in a sticky goo whatever resides in your gym bag. The numbers on my heart rate monitor only partially appear now. I think its electronics are, as the experts call it, “toast.”

But that’s all right, because it gives me the chance to pore over the current options and find a gadget that’s cool, affordable and has features I never knew existed when I bought my last monitor at a yard sale in Santa Cruz, one of the healthiest cities in the United States.

I’ll start with the most expensive monitor (because it’s getting close to Friday Fantasy Happy Hour), then look at the ones that are closer to my budget.

If money is no object, then you’ll want to consider the Suunto X6HRM, which sells for between $550 and $600. This device comes from a company in Finland (which explains those cool double u’s in its name) and is almost twice as costly as the Suunto Advizor Wrist Computer worn by that guy Sawyer on Lost when Ben informs him if his heart rate goes over 140, his heart will explode. (That beats any threats my instructors have barked at me during my gym sessions…)

The Suunto X6HRM is more than a simple heart rate monitor. It’s an over-the-top computer that will keep you informed about any number of data points, whether you’re cross-country skiing across the Arctic snowcap, rock climbing in Afghanistan, or cave diving in the Gulf of Mexico.

Besides the requisite heart rate monitoring (with interval timer, average/highest/lowest heart rate and altitude profile memory), you can record altitude, vertical speed, altitude difference and cumulative ascent with the on-board altimeter, gauge sea level pressure and weather trends with the barometer, establish your bearing with a compass, and set three alarms or monitor two time zones with the watch. The monitor comes with a transmitter belt (the thing you wrap around your chest so it can count your heart beats).

The challenge in using a monitor that’s jam-packed with this many features is that you need to learn which buttons to push and for how long in order to measure whatever is important to you at the moment. In other words, it’s mightily complex. If you choose your toys by the number of buttons it has or the complexity of its menu interface, then Suunto is your company. (I mean, if it were a company that made more ordinary products, it would probably only have a single u in its name, right?)

Next time I’ll look at something a mite simpler, in case your goals are more modest.