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Runners, is my hear...
 

Runners, is my heart rate or speed (or both) too high?

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When I have tried an apple watch in a shop (a few times) I found them to be rubbish. I know my garmin is accurate and the apple was about 10 beats wrong, consistently.

Did you measure your HR manually while wearing the Apple watches? It would have been the first thing I did if I thought there was a discrepancy.


 
Posted : 25/03/2025 5:22 pm
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@lunge Not quite. I ran with a very easy 7 miler on Tuesday (on a relatively hilly course) and my average hr was 95bpm according to my Garmin. I wasnt wearing a strap but in my tests they both track closely. I ran 5km yesterday morning, sub 9 min miling, and my HR average was only 103.


 
Posted : 25/03/2025 6:14 pm
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Posted by: surfer

@lunge Not quite. I ran with a very easy 7 miler on Tuesday (on a relatively hilly course) and my average hr was 95bpm according to my Garmin. I wasnt wearing a strap but in my tests they both track closely. I ran 5km yesterday morning, sub 9 min miling, and my HR average was only 103.

 

That puts you up with Mo Farah - maybe even Kipoge levels of aerobic fitness !  Get yourself in the next Olympics - a gold medal cert.

Or at least measure your HR manually - ie count your pulses on your throat for 15 seconds then multiply by 4. Then compare to what your watch says.

 

 

 


 
Posted : 25/03/2025 10:06 pm
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A low pulse doesn't make you a great athlete, it just means you have a low pulse. My last 5k jog was 115 bpm and I'm not even particularly fit these days. 


 
Posted : 26/03/2025 7:12 am
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That puts you up with Mo Farah - maybe even Kipoge levels of aerobic fitness !  Get yourself in the next Olympics - a gold medal cert.

Are you saying that you dont believe them? It doesnt mean what you suggest at all. The only thing I would say is that my aerobic system is well trained after 40+ plus years of training almost every day. The point it its just a number. It may be a "pointer" in that somebody untrained is unlikely to to match those numbers but It doesnt indicate that I can very run fast at all. I am simply saying that the OP's nephews HR numbers cant necessarily be dismissed. 

@thecaptain Low resting rates are often found in people who have done plenty of aerobic and anaerobic exercise over many years. They dont indicate that the holder is capable of running fast now but its generally a good indicator of heart health.


 
Posted : 26/03/2025 9:55 am
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Yes I agree generally it's linked to good health but it's not the case that exceptionally low means exceptional athlete. My resting pulse has been under 30 on occasion (about 36 now and I've not trained properly for over a year), I've trained hard in the past and been as fit and fast as I'm physically capable of being but I'm still just the level of a keen hobbyist. There are much faster people with significantly higher pulse rates!

Some non-athletic family members have a habit of setting off alarms when in hospital and their pulse drops below "safe" levels.


 
Posted : 26/03/2025 10:39 am
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My 40yo nephew did an 11k on a canal bank today and his average heart rate was 79bpm, max 85.

To be really picky, this doesn't say he was running so they could be walking stats and therefore accurate...

I concur with a couple of points above. I run or ride almost every day and use a strap and a Garmin. Whilst using the watch vs strap, the Garmin is a bit laggy when running and very laggy whilst cycling. It doesn't deal with short, fast bursts (like small hills) at all well (accurately). The strap also loses accuracy/connectivity over time which causes dropouts, rubbish data and spurious spikes.

Low resting HR used to be a rough indicator of fitness. As above, it could indicate a lifetime of aerobic training or just someone with the physiology of a very low resting HR. Mine is currently high 30's and I'm nowhere near as fit as usual for one reason or another (illness and injury mainly).

I'd just go running but use a credible HR monitor to ensure you dont overdo it. Fitter people can run harder than their bodies can stand (as they're aerobically fit) and run themselves into injury trouble. Coming back from illness or injury, I tend to build distance then improve time then rinse and repeat until I'm back where I want to be - or reinjured as I've overdone it again 🙃 

I'd be using your 10k at 10:00 mile pace as a base to improve on. Run at that until your average HR is say 135 to 140 then mebbies up the pace a little, say 9:30's and do that until you can manage the 10k at 9:30 average with HR back to 135 to 140 average and so on. You might need some harder training thrown in occasionally to stress things a bit but the main thing is, don't overdo it. Duration or pace.

That's my approach - rightly or wrongly. 

 


 
Posted : 26/03/2025 10:52 am
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but it's not the case that exceptionally low means exceptional athlete.

And I am an example of that but I suspect you are unlikely to find an exceptional (distance) athlete with a "high" resting rate.


 
Posted : 26/03/2025 10:52 am
 scud
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Another new-ish runner here, started with C25K in December and have first half marathon on 6th April and run 13 miles 3 times now in lead up.

Just what i have found as someone who loves a metric! 

HR zones for running are very different to my HR zones for cycling. Zone 2 for me cycling is 110-128BPM, running it is 125-141k, but i have found myself getting less and less obsessed about HR and gone with the "can i speak in whole sentences" as a guide for zone 2

I really struggle to get my max HR above 155-160 on the turbo trainer even when hot and doing long Vo2 max intervals, yet doing intervals running, found new max HR of 182

Other thing that has made a huge difference to me is breathing whilst running, making sure that breathes are "full" in that not just breathing with my chest, but making sure diaphragm opens and stomach clearly extends with each deep breath, and then breathing with my running cadence, that has brought HR down a lot with increasing fitness. Paying off though, i still have old numbers on my turbo trainer, and where i used to often sit at 128-130, i am now happily sitting at 110 for zone 2 stuff having added in running, so need to redo fitness tests on turbo  


 
Posted : 26/03/2025 11:16 am
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