Heart Rate Question

The HRM should do the math for you, even if you're doing an interval workout (unless you're creating new workouts each time you change speeds).

If I jog for 20 minutes and I notice that my heart rate monitor says 161 bpm (about 80%) for a while and then I get tired and walk, lowering my heart rate to 130 (a little less than 50%), and then I kick it back into high gear and get back up to the upper 150s or 160s what is my overall heart rate? Do I average the high and the low?

Does it really matter if you are not monitoring it for cals burned anyway? It would not be the average of the high and the low, the average would be a long calculation using a weighted average for each second your HR was at a given BMR. in 20 minutes you may have 5 mins at 160, 30 seconds at 158, 156, 152.... so taking an average of high and low would really not give you your average HR.

Even Polar F-1 gives average HR for the duration, but not cals burned, that you can plug the average HR into an online calculator to estimate the burn. Yours doesn't even give you average HR? Did you check all the settings?

I'm not sure which brand HRM you have but most of them have an online app that does all the work for you. I have a Polar H7 chest strap which syncs with my Polar Loop arm band. At the end of a work out, I tether it to my lap top or let it blue tooth sync with my cell phone and I can look at the heart rate data for the entire workout. That should give you an idea of what you are burning for the entire workout.