During a 5K race, it was warm (80s) and somewhat humid I guess.
I tested my max HR using the hill repeat method a few years ago and got 191. Earlier this year at Broad Street I hit 195, which I hadn't seen before.
My HRM has never malfunctioned, and it wasn't a spike - I was above 200bpm for the last third of a mile.
Am I okay? I'm just doing marathon training, only done one track workout in the past few months, and ran this 5K really fast, for me.
How old are you? If you're 20, you're probably OK. If you're 50, you might have a problem.
I'm 31.
Should I see a doctor or something, just in case? I feel fine/great. Should I just move up my HR zones and start running harder?
It looks like your earlier test was faulty. As far as I know it's impossible to have your max HR increase naturally. And having a max of 206 is fine. Mine is 220.
A couple of years ago, at age 49, I hit 203 in the final stretch during the Elvis 5K in Memphis. Humid, mid-August, and I was still coming back into shape from several missed months earlier in the spring.
Your other HRs (191, 196) are entirely consistent with this late-race surge. I wouldn't spend another moment worrying about it.
My usual max HR is 199-200, achieved at the end of very-fast-finishing hard workouts on humid summer evenings.
The other possibility is that your HR sensor (across your chest) briefly lost contact, which can make rates soar. If you have a program (I use Garmin) that translates HRs into a visual, a "line," it's pretty easy to see when error enters the picture (as, for example, when you're in the first mile of a run and it suddenly leaps from 142 to 180).
I see that you already considered a spike and ruled it out. I agree, given what you said about the last 1/3 of a mile.
I just went back and took a look at the metrics from the Elvis 5K, which was mid-August of 2007. My peak HR for each of the three miles looked like this:
Mile 1: 196
Mile 2: 196
Mile 3: 200
In the final tenth, as I kicked, my HR rose from 201 to 204. That's the highest I've ever recorded. I'm sure it's legit, and it doesn't scare me.
Bottom line: you're fine.
I'll be the one to ask the obvious question: Why were you wearing a HRM in a 5K race?
Josh wrote:
Should I see a doctor or something, just in case? I feel fine/great. Should I just move up my HR zones and start running harder?
I'd get it looked at. One thing about heart problems, very often you don't notice anything until it's serious.
The humidity most likely led to your HR getting high, but even if your max is 200-210, you're still looking at close to 95%. That's very high. Especially for only running for less than 20 minutes (I'm assuming.) I'd go to your primary care physician and just have them hook you up to an EKG. It takes like 10 minutes.
Also training wise, you're working way too hard even for a race. You don't want to pass threshold until the last part of a race. Once you exceed threshold, you cannot come back down.
asdsdasd wrote:
Josh wrote:Should I see a doctor or something, just in case? I feel fine/great. Should I just move up my HR zones and start running harder?
I'd get it looked at. One thing about heart problems, very often you don't notice anything until it's serious.
The humidity most likely led to your HR getting high, but even if your max is 200-210, you're still looking at close to 95%. That's very high. Especially for only running for less than 20 minutes (I'm assuming.) I'd go to your primary care physician and just have them hook you up to an EKG. It takes like 10 minutes.
Also training wise, you're working way too hard even for a race. You don't want to pass threshold until the last part of a race. Once you exceed threshold, you cannot come back down.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll get hooked up just to make sure everything is fine.
I'm towards the end of the training cycle (Pfitzinger), and yeah I probably pushed too hard during this race but I don't race much and I wanted to run a 'fast' one. I just wore the HRM for fun and because I'm a data geek, I probably would have slowed down had I looked at it during the race, would have freaked me out.
asdsdasd wrote:
Also training wise, you're working way too hard even for a race. You don't want to pass threshold until the last part of a race. Once you exceed threshold, you cannot come back down.
Don't push past threshold in a race? What are you talking about?
It's a 5k, he was going balls out, like any tough runner does when they race. One should be running much faster than threshold pace when running a 5k, don't give this guy bad advice.
LLCJ wrote:
I'll be the one to ask the obvious question: Why were you wearing a HRM in a 5K race?
I know the question was directed at the OP, but I'll add: I run 20-25 road races a year. I wear my HR monitor in one or two of them. I specifically DON'T wear it in important races, because I don't want to be distracted by stray thoughts like "Jeez, I need to be working harder" and the like.
But a couple of times a year, often in the summer when I know I'm not going for PRs, I wear it in the service of science, hoping to discover something useful that can help me train even more effectively.
One June, for example, I ran a dead-flat 5-mile race in Grenada, Mississippi on the top of a dam. 82 degrees, sunny, and humid. I decided to go out with the leader, strong local master's guy, just for the hell of it. I ran 6:21, 7:06, 7:05, 7:07, 6:41. Basically what I discovered is that going out with the leader--running significantly faster than a pace I could possibly sustain--forces you to slow at a certain point, and when you slow to a manageable pace, it ends up being (in my case) something more like tempo pace, even though your HR is still at race pace. That was a useful discovery.
asdsdasd wrote:
Also training wise, you're working way too hard even for a race. You don't want to pass threshold until the last part of a race. Once you exceed threshold, you cannot come back down.
pansy