High Resting Heartrate (51)

Anything above 41 is hobby jogger status.

"A normal resting heart rate can range from below 40 to 100 beats per minute. Below is a chart relating resting heart rate and fitness level. As can be seen on this chart, your resting heart rate can vary with your fitness level and with age — the fitter you are, generally the lower the resting heart rate. This is due to the heart getting bigger and stronger with exercise, and getting more efficient at pumping blood around the body - so at rest more blood can be pumped around with each beat, therefore less beats per minute are required.

Heart Rate and Fitness Chart

These ratings provide only a generalization of you fitness and health, there are many other factors which may account for variations in heart rate such as medications, illness and stress. For a true measure of resting heart rate, it is important for the measurement to be taking accurately and under the best resting conditions. There is more information and instructions on how and when to measure resting heart rate. Fitness can also be assessed by measuring heart rate during exercise, which is a better measure of fitness.

Resting Heart Rate for MEN

Age 18-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 65+

Athlete 49-55 49-54 50-56 50-57 51-56 50-55

Excellent 56-61 55-61 57-62 58-63 57-61 56-61

Good 62-65 62-65 63-66 64-67 62-67 62-65

Average 70-73 71-74 71-75 72-76 72-75 70-73

So-so 74-81 75-81 76-82 77-83 76-81 74-79

The resting heart rate for endurance athletes can be much lower than the values for general athletes."

Heart-rate is not the finest indicator of fitness. Half of the people claiming less than 40 are lying, anyway. I'd have to know more about your training, age, & how long you've been running to make any conclusions, but at this point I wouldn't worry. Put more thought into logging the miles & staying injury-free.

Fjjdjdndndfnndndn wrote:

Anything above 41 is hobby jogger status.

So Jim Ryan is a hobby jogger, thanks for that info!

Sure was!

See how silly it is to judge fitness based on a resting heart rate?

BTW mine is 2.

Didn't Bob Schul also have quite a high resting heart rate? Or was it a low maximum heart rate? Can't quit remember, but I do recall reading something along these lines somewhere! Sorry to be so horribly vague!!

My resting heart rate is currently around 50bpm - but I have done no serious running for about 6 months and would class myself as chronically unfit at the moment. My relatively low resting heart rate would be of no use whatsoever were I foolish enough to jump into a race tomorrow!!

QuickQuestion wrote:

My resting HR is 51... When browsing the forums, it seems that on average most posters here are below 40. Is 51 healthy for a fit runner? Too high?

That's some good browsing for you to be able to tally up the RHR for "most posters here".

Mine is about 55, and doesn't seem to get any lower when I get fitter. Also, my max HR is about 210 (and I'm 31).

My brother-in-law is currently 260lb and would probably struggle to run a single 9-min mile. His RHR is about 50.

Don't worry about your HR, max or resting. If you feel you need to use HR for training, use %HRR (Max-resting).

autoxfil wrote:

Mine is about 55, and doesn't seem to get any lower when I get fitter. Also, my max HR is about 210 (and I'm 31).

My brother-in-law is currently 260lb and would probably struggle to run a single 9-min mile. His RHR is about 50.

Don't worry about your HR, max or resting. If you feel you need to use HR for training, use %HRR (Max-resting).

This is good advice. Resting heart rate taken first thing in the morning can give you an indication if you're recovered from the previous day's workout or if you are getting the flu. If it's higher than normal, it's an indication of the above.

I often notice that my easy run heart rate is several beats higher than normal. That's an indication that I'm not recovered from the previous day and I need to remember that the purpose of a recovery run is recovery... so run slower and easy.

Not true that your RHR gets lower with better fitness because 'your heart gets bigger and stronger'. As has been posted, RHR isn't a great measure of fitness. A better measure of fitness using HR is to track HR at a given pace (run in cool conditions). HR at a given pace should go down as you become more fit. Also agree RHR taken first thing in the morning can be used to indicate lack of recovery/stress/lack of sleep.

That's not high, even for a runner. It's not low either but you shouldn't make any judgments, some people just have higher or lower resting heart-rates.

Age: 21. Training: Fit but fairly mediocre. I have been running for a few years, but have only started to become competitive.

iowakidscanrun wrote:

Not true that your RHR gets lower with better fitness because 'your heart gets bigger and stronger'. As has been posted, RHR isn't a great measure of fitness. A better measure of fitness using HR is to track HR at a given pace (run in cool conditions). HR at a given pace should go down as you become more fit. Also agree RHR taken first thing in the morning can be used to indicate lack of recovery/stress/lack of sleep.

But there is a physiological limit based on an individual.

Resting heart rate is of no significance unless it's abnormally high. Like all aspects of your physiology, it is to a large extent genetically determined. My 5K best is 16:30 and my RHR is around 60-65 regardless of whether I run 70 mpw or lift weights as my sole form of exercise.

Who is Jim Ryan?

OP: I wonder how you're still alive with a HR like that.