Average heart rate too high during marathon

It's just that being in a race situation elevates your heart rate. No biggie, this happens to me just about every time, even in races of no importance.

Was your heart rate too high? Don't give a second thought to what some book tells you should be averaging, just look at if you DNFed bonked in the actual race. Since you didn't, the HR was either too low or perfect.

I agree. What's the problem? The pacing looked fine OP is worrying about nothing.

Haddite,

Please clear up this contradiction if you can.

Hadd describes in detail that the most beneficial, basic adaptations for distance running occur at between 70-80% of HRmax.

For everyone, he recommends a marathon heart rate 15-20 beats below max and easy running 30 beats still lower(50 beats below max).

For those with higher HRmax, like his pupil Joe whose max was 193, the math works out as 50 beats under his max is 145 bp which is 75% of his max.

But, in my case with a max of 163, he recommends an easy pace of 115(163 minus about 50) which will be at most 70% of max.

Should I shoot for 70-80% of my max or 50 beats lower than max(65-70% of max)?

Thanks.

Bump, for anyone.

been Hadd wrote:

Haddite,

Please clear up this contradiction if you can.

Hadd describes in detail that the most beneficial, basic adaptations for distance running occur at between 70-80% of HRmax.

For everyone, he recommends a marathon heart rate 15-20 beats below max and easy running 30 beats still lower(50 beats below max).

For those with higher HRmax, like his pupil Joe whose max was 193, the math works out as 50 beats under his max is 145 bp which is 75% of his max.

But, in my case with a max of 163, he recommends an easy pace of 115(163 minus about 50) which will be at most 70% of max.

Should I shoot for 70-80% of my max or 50 beats lower than max(65-70% of max)?

Thanks.

Answer, anyone?

Different goals wrote:

Haddite wrote:

Different goals, while I'll chalk that up to you being a smart-a$$. As a coach who uses HR training to dial in MP. The graph is simply data from the race that you can review and use to make an assessment of what happened physiologically during the race. Why you would not want this additional info to learn from is just ignorance.

Ryan Hall might have been better off using an HRM in LA and seen he was blowing 92+% and he would have known he would have never have been able to finish. But he isn't being coached well.

I'll worry about that when people winning races regularly wear monitors.

Let's see what Paula Radcliffe has to say...

been Hadd,

I think you're getting tangled up a little bit with the math because of your lower maxHR.

If you have been through a pretty good aerobic build up, I would stick with anything below 75-80% of maxHR as being considered easy.

Like Joe, in Hadd's original Phase I document, they targeted 170 as his goal HR for the marathon. As Hadd states, you can run a marathon around 15-20 beats less than max for the marathon if properly trained. He then had Joe run a series of 2400 meter tests at each level of HR going up 10 beats at a time per 2400. As Joe progressed thru his phase I training, he was able to improve the pace of 170 by working solely on paces below what Hadd thought was his AeT (aerobic threshold) or marathon pace.

When most of us got to the private Hadd board, he insisted on us doing two things: 1) doing a maxHR test. 2) Always wearing our HRM for our easy days in the beginning. Almost all of us were running too hard on our easy days. Once we learned what was truly easy, we could leave the HRM at home. We would only wear it on work days.

You'd be amazed how in tune you get to your effort vs pace vs HR.

How did you test your max HR?

fkfjkfk wrote:

Your maximum heart rate is closer to 200.

I agree. The most logical explanation here is simply that the "actual measured maximum HR" is incorrect.

I checked my Garmin data. I don't have any records of sustained HR in the two marathons I ran back in 2006, but in 2009, at age 51, I ran the St. Jude half in 1:31 with an average HR of 182. At the time, my max HR was 197 (or at least that's the highest HR I notched in any race or workout for the six months before and after the race.)

Do the calculations: I sustained an average HR of 92.3% of max for 13.1 miles. It was a PR, a very hard-run race with an extremely hard-run last 3.1.

Point is, the general guidelines about HR--the presumptive max HR for specific age ranges; the % of max HR that you're supposed to be able to sustain for the duration of certain race distances--are flat-out wrong, at least in specific cases. I'm one of those cases.

I strongly suspect that your max HR was somewhat higher than 188. If your max HR was 192, for example, you would have sustained an average HR of 90% of max. That's supposed to be impossible, but look at my half marathon HR.

Short answer: don't worry about it. Your Garmin data looks fine to me.

KudzuRunner, That HR data from your half is spot-on what Hadd and many of the runners I have worked with over the years say is possible.

I just ran a half in late January, and while I am an extremely FT kinda guy, hit 92% on average for my race. Also at 51-years-old.

The only measurement I would throw out is the 220 minus your age stuff.

Know that ST type runners, if they are working on aerobic work and neglecting anaerobic work (which is typical) will not see the higher HR's that those of us FT will see. It gets harder for them to see max readings or sometime even close to it...

When you put an ST runner on a dose of really hard anaerobic stuff, you will see a spike in their HR's, at all distances, as a result of their anaerobic system becoming stronger and starting to be used more to fuel their efforts.