Heart Rate

cnf2013

Morning ladies! Hope you all had wonderful holidays!

I have a question about heart rate levels. I'd always gone by the old adage that to figure out your target heart rate you subtract your age from 220. FI got me a pretty nice Polar HRM as a Christmas gift and this morning I was playing around with it on my run. I was checking my average HR at the various speeds I tend to run at when training and seeing how "efficient" my runs are. Going by the 220-age math my runs are keeping me in a lower HR range. However, my HRM has my high THR around 167, significantly lower than 220-age. I'm pretty sure my HRM is more accurate than my old adage and that it's probably pretty spot on with everything, but I was curious about your knowledge on the subject. 

Either way, I had a great run this morning; a 5k in under 30 minutes, which is pretty decent for me, especially not having worked out in a few days and eating pretty poorly. So I'll take it.

unchatenfrance

If you're doing steady-state cardio for 30+ minutes, you should keep your HR within 55-75% of your maximum HR. Exceeding it and sustaining a high heart rate for a longer period of time increases oxidative damage to tissues, leads to systematic inflammation, a compromising of the immune system, and it decreases fat metabolism. Have you tried interval training?

cnf2013

I interval train regularly. I just wasn't sure when to keep "in the range" versus top at at my highest HR. My HRM gives me a range to train within and I stayed in the range for a fair portion of my run and was slightly above for most of it. I only scraped my 220-age rate for about a minute or two at the very end. I did a pretty paced run today, averaged about 6.3 mph, so nothing crazy. A round of intervals with it to see how my HR stacks up during that is on the docket for tomorrow. 

unchatenfrance

You want to reach your personal max HR in interval training, and in a last sprint toward the end of a longer run, sure. But for the bulk of your longer runs, I'd aim for 75% or below of max HR.

cnf2013

That's exactly what I did today. Thanks!