Today was my first time ever using a heart rate monitor and I felt like a kid with a new toy. For years many of my friends who know I start out too fast, have begged me to start using one of these but I always found them cumbersome.
I was coming off doing a 20 mile road/trail run yesterday so I was a little tired but I really wanted to see what this heart rate training was all about. I strapped the monitor to my chest and off I went.
About ½ miles into the run, the strap, which apparently I didn’t tighten enough, came loose and dropped from above my chest to below my waist. Amazingly enough it continued to record my heart rate though so instead of stopping my run and adjusting it, I decided to just keep running.
I would periodically check my heart rate and my average pace to gauge where my heart rate was. I noticed that when I ran a 7:30 to 7:45 minute mile, my heart rate would climb above 200 bpm. The closer I got to my actual race pace of 8:00 minutes per mile, I noticed that my heart rate was 190 to 195 bpm. This is where I tried to keep my heart rate for the majority of the run. Again, it’s difficult to know how accurate the reading was because the strap had fallen down but I will have to use that as a starting point and the next time I go out I will check again, this time with the strap tighter.
My goal was to finish the run in 1:20 which is an 8 minute mile. I once again started out fast and this gave a nice cushion of 44 seconds at the 7 mile mark. I needed every bit of those seconds because after the 8 mile mark I was 52 seconds ahead but this fell to only 35 seconds by the time the 9th mile was finished. I lost some time as I had to stop at a traffic light. I also had to do 2 hills which didn’t help. I finished the run in 1:19:20 seconds so I was able to make up an additional 5 seconds during that final mile, most of which was again uphill.
After running 30 miles (48KM’s) in 2 days it’s time for a day of rest tomorrow.
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