My new coach… sort of… tells me I have a big heart.
Last week I bought a Heart Rate Monitor Strap accessory to my Garmin Forerunner 405 from my running friend Dr. Lyndon (known as “malmonmd” in takbo.ph).
These devices use bluetooth to pair both devices together and according to the manual, the strap’s battery should last 3years if used an hour a day. The GF405 screen could be customized to show the real-time heart rate and even graph it. I think the graph could be used to show that our hearts doesn’t rise quickly in a race or a regular exercise. That’s why we often have to take it conservatively slow at the beginning.
I purchased this in order to base my training on effort, not on absolute pace. This should prevent me from over-training and under-training. In short, precision training. All future mileage wouldn’t be for no reason anymore. Now that’s what I call intelligent running.
In theory, the mileage build-up phase needed for the marathons should be done below lactic threshold pace, or below 85% Maximum Heart Rate. To be an endurance athlete, one must log miles at a certain heart rate. According to Dr. Philip Maffetone, we should run our base mileage at a hear rate of 180 minus age. For me, this would have to be 150bpm. This seems correct because at above 150bpm, it feels harder to sustain the pace for more than an hour.
Another interesting article I’ve stumbled upon is an informative website full of pacing tools and race predictions. http://www.electricblues.com/runpro.html. You could input your Maximum Heart Rate and Resting Heart Rate.
Therefore, I rested for 2 days and measured my Resting Heart Rate in the morning. Good thing the Garmin could record the heart rate so you could view it offline in the computer.
My technique:
1)Wake up at 4:00AM
2)put my HRM strap on
3)Turned on the stopwatch of my GF405 to record my HR.
4)Set the alarm to 4:30AM (I normally run at 5AM)
5)Go back to sleep.
6)Wake up at 4:30AM
7)Stop the stopwatch of my GF405
8)Wait for it to automatically upload to my PC.
9)Take a look at the datalogs of my HR.
My lowest recorded heart rate was 41 beats per minute. See those spikes? I could be dreaming that I’m running…
My Resting Heart Rate: 41bpm
I then searched at runner’s world to get the Maximum Heart Rate. It says I have to run a mile warm-up, and then a mile at tempo-pace, run 400meters at 5K race pace, jog for 200meters, and then run the final 400meters all-out. I followed this method this morning and measured my Maximum Heart Rate at the final 400meters to be a disappointing 179bpm. I was wishing for something impressive like 200bpm, but that’s what I got.
My Maximum Heart Rate: 179bpm
What’s the significance of all these? Well according to some formulas, I should have an MHR of 190bpm, and my actual MHR of 179bpm should be from a 50year old man. That’s not so encouraging… so I searched Google to find some answers. Turns out there are no correlation of MHR with race performance nor fitness levels. The MHR wouldn’t change even with exercise. They say it’s just a number, but it could decline with aging sedentary people. Formulas like 200 minus age, or 220 minus 0.6 x age could have some errors – in my part, a huge one.
I guess I would have to accept that my heart couldn’t rev as I expected it to be. Now I realize my heart isn’t like those high revving B16 Honda Civic engines. It’s more like the deep-sounding V8 american muscle car engines that are torquey but have low rpm limits. Now all I have to do is lose more weight and I’d be like a lightweight Mazda Miata with a Ford Small Block V8 engine swap. Hey, some weird people have actually done this!
Now that I know the full-range of my heart rate, I could now apply zones for my trainings. The GF405 could be set to specific zones needed for a particular run. For now, these are my settings as adjusted by garmin from my MHR and RHR:
Zone1: 110 to 124bpm (for Warm-ups)
Zone2: 124 to 138bpm (for easy run and Long Run)
Zone3: 138 to 151bpm (Marathon Pace and Maffetone’s Maximum Aerobic Heart Rate)
Zone4: 151 to 165bpm (Lactate Threshold Tempo Runs)
Zone5: 165 to 179bpm (5K and 10K races, and intervals)
Comments (9)
400m could be a little short to push your HR to the max. HR is also influenced by weather conditions, your fatigue level… I think that’s better to determine your HR zones based on lactate treshold than on maximum HR.
>Hi Andrej. Greetings from the Philippines and thanks for visiting my blog.
I just took the 400m method from Runnersworld.com, but do you have a better way to determine MHR? Almost all articles I see about MHR is just an all-out 400m run. Perhaps I should do a stress test at the lab? But there’s a theory, if you would be doing most of your runs on the road, then test yourself on the road. If you would be doing most of your runs on the treadmill, then the lab should be OK…
By the way the temperature and humidity here in the Philippines is very high compared there in Croatia, so I should be pretty stressed here already.
How do you determine your lactate threshold, isn’t it in a laboratory? Why should we base our HR zones on Lactate? If it’s called Heart Rate Zones – aren’t we supposed to base this on Heart Rates in the first place???
Wow may “bra” na rin si Nats. Thanks for the tips on how to use the HRM more effectively. Pang international ang post na to a.
>Gani migs, lantawa na bala ang blogs niya, halimaw na sya gali, gin kulbaan ko gani. hahaha!
I’ve only done max HR test once and it was when I started running almost 4 years ago. After warm up, I have run 1 km almost all out, then paused a couple of minutes and done another km all out. At the time I didn’t know much about HR training and I probably found this procedure on the net. I’m saying this because I’m not sure if I could hit maximum HR after only 400m, especially considering that first 400m at 5k pace doesn’t stress you much.
. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.
It’s heart rate at lactate threshold that counts, not the threshold itself. There are a couple of methods to determine it. Laboratory methods are most accurate, but there are also other methods with similar accuracy. I think that the most simple method is to run 30 minutes as hard as you can and record average HR for the last 20 minutes. You should pace evenly during the test. HR for that last 20 minutes should be your lactate threshold HR. In theory you should be able to run 1h on your LT heart rate, so this method could give you a couple beats higher results. As many people are not fit enough to run 1h hard test is only 30 min long.
Don’t stress yourself too much with this. Consistency brings results and it’s not so important if you run on 140 bpm or 145.
Currently, I would give everything for a bit of heat and humidity
>Hi Andrej, thanks for explaining the Heart Rate on the LT. I think I’ll have to agree with you on that. It makes me also wonder if the zones are correct at all – most training programs assume stress is a straight line from RHR to MHR and then plot equally spaced zones for every workout. I’m thinking it may not be a straight line for all runners, it could be skewed to the left (RHR) for very fit runners.
About the Heat and Humidity – you should visit us sometimes here in the Philippines. Run with us, maybe during summer. We also have some triathlons here. It can be really hot here though… even for us….
I’ll drop by your blogs if I have more questions. For now, thanks a lot! I feel satisfied with your explanation.
baw, astig ang imo watch ba…
muzta ka da?
>astig man gani imo! hehehe. ayos man a. nag happy run ka?
Nathaniel….wow! 41bph!! Of all the runners I know, yours is the lowest yet. Mine has become as low as 46-47. Take care my friend!
>Really, so this is quite low already? Unfortunately they don’t reward the lowest RHR in races
hehehe. I took mine after resting 1 or 2days, but normally it ranges 45 to 55, depending on the intensity of my run the previous day. But runnersworld.com says you have to take it during days without running, and to wake-up without an alarm ‘coz this could put some stress into you by surprising you. You also take care there, and let us know of the results of your half-marathon this coming Sunday.
hindi ko nagjoin ang happy run pero ara ko dra kay may appointmen ko kay si vener aka rununltd and BR.
upod ka sa runabout sa sunday?
>ano nga runabout? diin?
Tuod? Kanami man sa explanation gid!
Salamat gid sa paglagaw-lagaw sa ako man na blog. Seriously, I find the article very interesting. Kamuntik na akong mag-nosebleed. 
>hala, ilongga ka man gali? ayos ah…
Mas baskug blog mo eh, damo ko natun-an. Basahon ko pa karon blogs mo pag puli ko sa balay, basi madakpan ko sang boss ko diri. hehehe.
Hi. Just a minor correction. The heart rate monitor (and other garmin sensors) uses the ANT protocol. Although it shares the same frequency with Bluetooth, ANT and Bluetooth are actually 2 different protocols.
Best regards.
Hi Dindo, Thanks for correcting me. I thought ANT was Bluetooth. It does make sense not to use Bluetooth to prevent crosstalk with other devices.