Hello all, not sure whether to post under ´Health and Injury´or Beginners, but here goes anyway:
So i have just started running for the first time in several years, although even then i never really committed to anything more than a few weeks of random 5 - 10k efforts here and there.
Anyway having just started again, on my third run the other night i got a little lost and so continued for just over 10km. I did this in about 51 minutes, over a mixture of tarmac, gravel and mud. The whole run i never felt like i was pushing myself, and could have probably gone alot faster, however after getting back an analysing the results from my Garmin Forerunner, my average heart rate was 174 bpm. It is telling me i am ´overreaching!?´
It seems strange my heart rate was so high, yet i found it relatively easy. I am 34, 84kg, 179cm, smoked until a month or so ago, and never really do much exercise.
Is this normal? Should i be worried? Any advice would be appreciated.
My watch seems to think my VO2 max is around 49 (?) although i dont really trust a watch for analysing this.
Comments
It might be that you shouldn't really trust a watch at all!
If you're going to train by heart rate, you should do a Max HR test to find your true level (plus a few early morning reads to find the baseline). That way you'll be able to set the Garmin to the right zones. The other thing to do is have a few more runs with it to get used to it, especially how quirky it can be over the first few minutes of any run (which you might need to ignore). Little tricks like wetting the sensor on a strap, that kind of thing, help with accuracy. Don't worry about it for now is the main message, just get some more runs under your belt that feel like you're not pushing yourself just yet.
I don't like tech!
It took me a month of slowly building to see my HR come down, for you it could take longer as it's been years (plus smoking) but keep in mind how you feel, can you talk or sing a few lines on a song if you listen to music? This would be about the right effort for a standard daily run and you just need to keep in mind slower and consistent is better tjan trying to force fitness for now. Based on your background You could run every day for a year and improve still, just at a relative easy effort
Have you actually set your max heart race on the watch... do you know your max...... if it's set st a default max heart rate that is nothing like your max