Running slower is tricky.

(RE chest straps, I can't say enough good about my Zephyr HxM. All fabric chestband, they outfit Olympians and military from their website. Awesome customer support. )
 
I have had my calves almost cramp up on me while running with my kids. Going slower is more difficult.
 
I've got an ancient Polar F7 that a friend won in a race and gave to me. I've replaced the batteries a couple of times and the chest strap once. The original soft strap wasn't so hot, but the new one that I bought a couple of years ago has been solid. You might be able to find something like that used and buy a new chest strap. I think that was about $20 ... I got used to the chest strap pretty quickly.
 
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I have had my calves almost cramp up on me while running with my kids. Going slower is more difficult.

Same here, not that I am a fast runner or anything but I do find slow running more taxing.
Adam, I used to have a FS1 for many years(lost it last year) and I bought it for about about $40. i don't use a heart monitor nowdays I just run by feel but I do have one tho(Garmin) I am sure you can find an older version for cheap.
 
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I have had my calves almost cramp up on me while running with my kids. Going slower is more difficult.

I'll bet you were using your calves for pushing, rather than harvesting elastic rebound. When I started doing the Maffetone thing with the long warm up and cool down, I got a lot better at running slowly. It's almost like running is a bunch of different skills, fast, moderate, slow, uphill, downhill, flat ... all seem to require a form adjustment.
 
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When I wore a HR chest strap, I found that after a while, I was able to guess pretty much where my HR was. So one might not have to wear it all the time, just to stay in the zone. However, those HR formulas are inaccurate anyway. The body is not so easily quantified.