HR Training Newbie - My Stats are Wack!

Get a chest strap or armband before you try to train by HR.

It is a glitch with your watch. Mine does the same thing. Get a HR strap, otherwise, just run at an easy pace.

Curious_Cat wrote:

Get a chest strap or armband before you try to train by HR.

+1 only chest straps are accurate.

It's a garmin vivoactive 4. not sure how accurate that is. I used the treadmill HR grip things to reconcile every once in a while and the seemed to match up.

1. Get a chest strap. I recommend the polar H10.

2. 220-age is horribly inaccurate. I know a 24 year old that runs a sub 16k 5k and his max is 168.

3. Since you are a former sprinter you would enjoy hitting the 2-3 mmol work via broken intervals, like 60-90 seconds running with a 30 second rest repeated 10-20 times

Former sprinter/jumper turned distance runner. 36 years old so similar age.

* Get a chest strap. Your watch will have you chasing your tail.

* Ideally you will know your max HR and target 70-75% and more like 65-70% on recovery days (after a hard workout)

^ In lieu of knowing your max HR I have found MAF good enough. You should be around 140. This is often hard when you first get going. It may actually involve some walking and very slow jogging but over time it will start to click. When I first started running at these HRs I was running quite slowly but over my first training cycle my MAF HR pace dropped by like 90 seconds+.

* You have to keep doing workouts. People who think just running zone 2 will get you solid improvement are dumb. Use HR guidelines to ensure that you are adequately recovering my harder sessions.

* I look at the average of the run. It usually takes me a few miles to get up to the target HR. I will chill there for awhile and then exceed it by a few BPM towards the end of a run. Some cardiac drift is natural.

* Warm weather throws HR training into a frustrating state. My summer HR can easily be 10+ BPM higher at similar paces to colder weather. There is balance here. You do need to slow down a bit but sticking purely to HR zones just isn't manageable for me. I allow for 5 extra BPM when never 80 and sometimes don't pay attention at all if few points are totally off the rails.

If you're running three days a week I probably wouldn't even bother with Z2. You won't be doing a large enough quantity of aerobic conditioning to ever get you to the point where you can run at a decent pace at such a low heart rate. Stick with the faster stuff and that'll probably develop you more as a runner when running 3 days a week. If you commit to the sport at least 5–6 days a week, then Z2 becomes worth doing.

As all of the others have already said, chest strap is the most accurate. But ... you might get more reliable data if you tighten your watch strap. I've found I need to do that on my Garmin 745, especially in colder weather.

heartratesrule wrote:

It's a garmin vivoactive 4. not sure how accurate that is. I used the treadmill HR grip things to reconcile every once in a while and the seemed to match up.

heartratesrule wrote:

So a little context - I am a former sprinter in university turned gym rat with a little bit of running/cardio on the side

2nd run (today) exact same thing happened. Took a really long time and some faster running to get HR up but then about 2 miles in it really flew up and I had to walk it back to 10-11min miles.

Is this normal or is this just due to my crap aerobic and fast twitch fibre dominance? Both runs averaged 145bmp but obviously this isn't the right way to do it. Should I just be starting slower and taking longer to reach that 145 or is it ok to get your HR up by running faster at the start?

The HR data may indeed be accurate.

If you are fast twitch and have a very under developed aerobic system, you may be using your FT muscle fibres during the early part of your run. You say you are running the early miles quite fast, the slow twitch may be so under developed that they are by passed.. These FT fibres may then tire, and the effort becomes greater, so your HR goes up. Try running the early miles much slower.

Thanks all, all great stuff.

A couple comments that caught my attention were "don't bother doing zone 2 if you are doing only 3 days a week" & "don't forget to do fast workouts"

So to clarify I will also be running on gym days but those will all be zone 2 so I'll actually be running/cardio 5x per week. The plan roughly looks like this:

Tues/Thurs = 45-1 hour zone 2 shorter runs pre-gym

Friday = 1 hour zone 2 (6 miles or so)

Sat = long run day(which for me is 10miles but would like to work up to 15)

Sun = Fast workout day - exp. 3x 1 mile @ 6-6:30 or so pace (my best mile is 5:15 but if I raced one nowadays maybe I could get 5:30-45)

I'm training for cycling fitness right now, and am 40 years old.

My garmin watch's heart rate data isn't reliable. I had an older one that was much more accurate; I upgraded, and now it's rarely worth looking at. I use a chest strap any time I want real data.

The 220-age is a loose ballpark only. My resting is lower than most fit people, and my max is higher than most fit people. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with my fitness - just my physiology. While I'm more fit than a majority of people, I'm nothing special (5min cycling power is 5.2W/kg, and FTP approx 4.2W/kg).

I forgot what I was originally going to say. I can sustain 180bpm for 30-40min, but that would be my predicted max.

Do you have a running goal? It sounds like you don't. You just want to add some "cardio" to your workouts.

It seems to me that everything you do when working out should have a goal. If it doesn't have a goal, then there's no need to do it.

Assuming you don't have a race goal, then I would suggest that you look up Sprint 8 workouts by Phil Campbell. The idea is that you warm up with a slow jog and some easy shake-out strides and then you run 8 reps of 30 seconds near all-out followed by a 90-second recovery. This is much easier to do on an elliptical or spin bike because all-out sprinting is both hard and runs the risk of injury. A compromise would be to raise the grade of the treadmill and go for 20 seconds all out.

If that doesn't appeal to you, then just dial in 11-minute miles on the treadmill and run for 30-45 minutes. It will take several minutes for your HR to gradually creep up to around 140.

As others have said, 220-age can be WAY off in predicting your MHR. In my case, 220-74 =146, but I hit 184 last year and 179 many times last year.

Oh, I forgot to explain the goal for the Sprint 8 workout.

The Sprint 8 boosts T levels and hGH levels and metabolism. It optimizes the benefits gained in the short amount of time required for the workout. Of these goals, naturally optimizing your T levels should be a priority for a healthy long life.

Zone 1: <65% (recovery, or very high milesathletes easy runs)

Zone 2: 66-76% (easy runs, most of the time, more miles-more runs in the lower range)

Zone 3: 79-83% (most avoidable zone)

Zone 4: 85-92% (marathon-half-threshold)

Zone 5: >92% (12k-3k-....)