Thursday, December 6, 2007

What's up with my Heart Rate?


My good friend Skud gave me a nice timex watch and a heart rate monitor before a race we were in back in November.


I think my average heart rate during the 5 and a half hour race was around 160.


Since then I've done a little research but much of it contradicts itself.


The past two runs I've taken have been a little disturbing because I ran with different groups of people and they were both concerned with how high my heart rate stays.


How high is too high? What am I supposed to do about it?


Just as a guess- I will get all kinds of different advice on this and just pick the one I like best.

Don't we have a team Doctor? Maybe I should talk to him.


2 comments:

Anne Findlay said...

Heart rate is such an individual measure. It depends on your age, sex, weight, conditioning, temperature, etc. I did my first half-ironman triathlon with an average heart rate of 178! But I've toned it down and my heart rate average is now closer to 160 during a race. What's your resting heart rate first thing in the morning? And when your heart rate is 160, what's your perceived intensity (like on a scale from 1 to 10)?

Dave said...

160 doesn't feel like death or anything. Probably like a 6-7 on intensity. It's not like sprinting uphill or anything that bad. That's more like a 180 kind of HR.
I will have to test first thing in the morning to see what my resting HR is.
Thanks