Heart Rate

It’s the third week of the training cycle, meaning that an easy week is next. I ran 28 miles two weeks ago, 30 last week and 30 also this week. The long run last week was a 10-miler, just as it will be this week.

I’ve begun experimenting with heart rate workouts, where you aim for a certain target with each run, even the recovery runs. I did intervals Monday, harder running to get the heart rate to a certain number, then easy running until it lowers to a certain point. Wednesday was tempo run day, four miles at about 8:15 or so, with a HR of about 165-168.

My max heart rate (MHR) is 185, so I’m going off that to get a zone 4 range of 157-171. My Garmin is designed to handle these things—it beeps at you if your HR is too low or too high, and is silent if you’re in the range you want.

What I’m having trouble with is telling the Garmin where I want the ranges to be. I’ll be running in the range I want, but it’ll tell me that’s too high. So it’s a trial and error process. We’ll get there.

I’ve also learned about the array of info available on my Garmin watch. I’ve had the settings a certain way as long as I’ve owned it, but tinkering with the number of data fields on each screen and what those screens display has been an eye opener. I can have it tell me things like pace, heart rate, speed (mph), sunrise, sunset, cadence (unsure on that one), etc. Amazing. That’s also a work in progress as I determine what info I want to have while I’m out there.