The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Well, maybe the heart is a PIA hunter, because when you are dealing with Mr. Heart Monitor (why do I name all the difficult things Mr. ... hmmmm....), you can go straight to the looney bin without passing go as you learn how it works for you.

Heart rate is important. It's one of nature's ways of calibrating the difference between "this is fun" and "you are gonna die soon." In case your body isn't already telling you that, which it probably is, but not in a way you can easily decipher. Therefore, we have created the device that tells you what speed you should be running or biking vis a vis what the little numbers say.

EVERYONE has a different heart rate, both resting and active, and it's not always true that the bestest athlete has the lowest resting heart rate (one of those urban myths). The little monitor thingies on the gym equipment are based on an average rate of the average person of average weight in the average city on an average day (your heart rate will change from day to day, depending on your stress, rest, heat, exertion and what you did yesterday). Therefore, they are useless. Subtracting your age from 220 only works your brain as a math exercise. It may be no where near your actual number.

There are a couple of ways to truly calibrate your heart rate, but the easiest way is to find someone to do a full oxygen test on you--this is where they strap on that Top Gun mask and force you to run and/or bike faster for a little while until you reach what we call the point of "gonna die soon." Based on your heart rate and oxygen flow together, the technician will determine your heart rate limits for easy, medium (just below lactate threshold), hard (right at lactate threshold) and redline (above lactate threshold). You should be able to run or bike all day on the easy limits (well, not all day of course---but you know what I'm saying here), run or bike for a couple of hours on the medium limits, run or bike for several minutes at the hard threshold, and run or bike at redline for only a few seconds.

Once you have your numbers in hand--and they will be different for the bike and the run, so you have to test both separately--you will then have to start training by using your heart rate as a guide. By the way, heart monitors don't work for phooey in the water (some of them are engineered to get wet okay--so you don't have to put them on after a swim and before a bike--but the water itself just doesn't allow the mechanics of the devices to work well).

I can tell you from experience--and I am sure Coach Claire will chime in with a laugh--that I nearly lost my most excellent sense of humor during my initial heart rate training. I had been running for four years and had completed 4 half marathons, all around an 11:20 mile pace. When I first started heart rate training, in order to run in the "easy" zone, I had to run about a 13 min mile for maybe four minutes before my numbers zoomed up to Pluto (which isn't even a planet anymore) and then would have to walk a minute or so to get the derned thing down. I kept complaining that I was runner SLOWER and SHORTER than I knew I could, but Claire kept insisting my heart would start to become more efficient eventually, and I would be back at my old paces or even faster, and with much more endurance and capability. I scoffed. Again and again I would head out for a run thinking I was going easy, only to look down at the monitor and realize I was up over the moon. That went to show me that you may THINK you know easy, medium, hard and redline by feel, but you really don't--only the heart knows for sure.

One day I was shocked--I managed to run an entire 45 minutes within my easy zone without having to walk. I was so excited, even though I was still posting about a 12:45 min mile pace during this run. Then slowly--very slowly--my "easy" level continued to let me increase my pace without the added space shuttle trip to the high numbers. Now I'm back to running 45 minutes between an 11 and 12 minute mile (depending on my day) and I'm so much better at being able to run very long distances without stopping. I can do up to 7 miles at a heart rate easy pace without stopping, which I never could before.

The monitor lets me and my coach determine pace for these long easy runs, and also for faster intervals or tempo runs, as well as the bike pace (I find it easier to keep the danged thing under control on the bike, as I've always been a slow biker). I'm not wed to it, and there are days I run without it because I just need to get out there and go run. But it's been a great tool in my endurance chest and I highly recommend getting one, and getting tested properly for your levels.

My spouse just started running with his monitor after being tested and he has been going through the gripe phase. Monday night he finally managed to break through and run a full 3.25 miles without the monitor going into the "bad boy!" zone and he could see he had really been going too fast before, and therefore using up all his go juice too soon. The griping may be over.

You can buy good monitors at any running store or sports store. I like Polar, because they make a sports bra where the monitor snaps right onto the front so I don't have to wear the chest strap (which to me looks like something Kirk Douglas would wear in Spartacus). But there are other good ones out there, including Garmin, which can coordinate with your Garmin GPS so you aren't Dick Tracey with seven watches on your wrist when you run, like I am. Setting them up can be a pain, and you need to read the instructions carefully. My spouse loves the calorie burner on his, and he really grooved that the watch showed him a cake with candles on his birthday. It's the little things.

A heart monitor can also alert you to overtraining. If your resting heart rate is high after a couple of hard work out days, it's telling you that you need a rest day.

Be heart smart in your training.

Last night was a 45 min easy run--and I ran slower than last week, because my heart rate kept jumping so I had to keep around a 12 minute mile. I figured this was a result of a hard day at work plus I had dealt with a rather exhausting weekend so my body is apparently still in a little bit of fatigue state. Tonight is a short, but interval specific, bike in the 103 degree heat. Remind me not to whine in February when I'm cold....