Heart Rate Monitor Fun

I've been playing with my new Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS/heart rate monitor/all around ridiculous new toy. So far I've only taken it on a couple of short ~2.6 mile runs, as I haven't been running and don't want to boost my mileage too quickly for fear that I'll get hurt.

Even on these short runs, I'm learning quite a bit about my heart rate. If you read any of the triathlon training texts, they recommend getting blood work done to determine all this stuff about your fitness and training and VO2 Max and anaerobic threshold and all this other stuff that I find a bit excessive for my level of involvement. However, they very strongly recommend training with a heart rate monitor. Hence my purchase.

Training with a HRM essentially breaks your training into intervals based on percentage of your maximum heart rate. There's a bunch of ways to determine your max HR (and I still need to go the track and actually test mine empirically), or you can use a little equation. There are like ten of those too, depending on who you talk to.

Turns out my calculated max HR, based on age and gender, is around 185 beats per minute. My resting heart rate is about 60 (taken lying down in the morning), which is kind of high. There are five "training zones" used that are broken down (based on my max HR) as follows:

HR Zone 1: 93 - 111 bpm
HR Zone 2: 111 - 130 bpm
HR Zone 3: 130 - 148 bpm
HR Zone 4: 148 - 167 bpm
HR Zone 5: 167 - 185 bpm

When I ran my little 2.6-mile route over the weekend, I found that my heart rate hovered between 155 and 165, maxing out at 175. Apparently that's a bit high for an extended workout, but it didn't feel like I was exerting myself that much. Maybe my HR is off a bit.

This GPS thingy also has pre-loaded workouts for running and cycling based on either pace or heart rate, so this morning I did one of the running workouts. It was broken up as follows:

2:00 minutes, HR Zone 1
2:00 minutes, HR Zone 2
2:00 minutes, HR Zone 3
(note: all of these heart rate zones are walking. Zone 3 was walking quickly, but I couldn't believe how fast my heart rate came up. What that means I have no idea but I was annoyed that Zone 3 was walking. Seemed ridiculous.)
Repeat the steps below 4 times:
     Go 0.5 miles in HR Zone 4
     4:00 minutes in HR Zone 2
2:00 minutes, HR Zone 2
2:00 minutes, HR Zone 1

I also found it nearly impossible to get my HR down quickly enough to keep the thing from beeping at me. It turned into a little game - it would beep angrily at me when my HR was either too high or too low, then give a satisfied little chirp when I got it into the target.

Zone 4 was a very, very slow jog for me. It felt too slow, in fact, and I felt like I didn't really get much of a workout. I don't know if that means my HR is off or if I've been going too hard (I can't really believe I've been going too hard! That's ridiculous!). But I went 3.3 miles (with a LOT of walking - every 4:00 minute rest to get my HR back into zone 2 I had to essentially walk as slowly as I possible could, which was totally frustrating) and I feel like I could use another workout.

Anyway, I'll play around with this thing some more to try and figure out my max HR and go from there. It's a very fun new toy and was a great way to spend my REI dividend!


My next project is to figure out how much training (running/biking/swimming - each of which will have a different max heart rate that I have to figure out empirically) I am supposed to do in each zone to get faster and stronger, and then figure out a schedule to fit it all in.

Of course, this does not count the CrossFit stuff I've already been doing - I would guess CrossFit has us in Zone 5 for 10-25 minutes, it's that intense. But I'm getting stronger already!

This toy is so cool though - it uploads my workouts to my computer, where I can view graphs of my heart rate, distance, pace, and I can see my route on a little map (that is surprisingly accurate).