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Resting Heart Rate
Just wondering what an average resting heart rate is? I'm 36, have been training moderately on and off for several years, mine's 47 bpm. I'm trying to up the effort now for a crack at a 10k pb in October, would I expect this to fall much, or at all?
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In my experience most of the drop brought on by training occurs quite quickly in the first few weeks, after that its a longer haul. Putting it another way, don't be put off if it isn't going down any further - look at other markers like HR at a fixed speed say during reps or on an LT run.
Mine was 55 in January pre-training and is now between 48-50. But most of that improvement happened in the first six weeks, since then it hasn't moved much.
In the old days, pre running age 42 smoker. RHR 70+
When I'm untrained its around 55.
That's super low.
Mohammed Ali's was only in the 50's.
My upper reading, at the top of a hill rep. last Thursday was 192, which is far higher than the max of 161 produced by the recognised formula of 220 minus your age. I presume the fitter you are, the more you can exceed the "norm".
TE, Your 192 at 59 is astonishing. Do you think this could be a spurious reading? As max HR diminishes with age this must mean that 30 years ago your max HR would have been very high, probably as high as 210!
A female running friend is 37 and regularly tops 200 on tough hills!
Your figure is high but not unknown. I have a graph of one of the studies done in my book on sports cardiology, it only goes up to 53 but there are dots on the graph at over 200 at that age, although the mean is about 180.
I believe my high readings are correct as I always achieve similar readings after hard sessions. I was not running 30 years ago, I started at age 35, 24 years ago and attained a PB of 35 mins 52 secs. at the age of 44 years 6 months for 10K. I have no idea what my heart rate was, because in those days it didn't seem important. I suppose it is possible that I am pushing myself too hard, but I have always trained this way and luckily, perhaps due to warm ups and down, plus stretching, I have never had any injuries, other than the odd niggle which we all get from time to time.
Saying that max heart rate goes down with age is like saying that muscular strength, bone density and all sorts of other things go down with age. It may be statistically true, but it's not a function of age, it's a function of people's lifestyles changing as they get older and generally becoming less active. There's a lot of rubbish trotted out about this in this month's Runners World mag.
The above is not just espoused by RW mag but by all training guides and sports physiologists. If you know different RB let me know your source.
I didn't say that you can raise your maximum HR by training. I'm saying that the formulae used to predict reductions in max HR and other physiological measurements do not hold true when applied to the "chronically fit" person. The Runners World article and other similar articles state as fact that various physiological measurements WILL decline with age. It's statistically likely, but not inevitable, and people like Terence (above) who train hard in their 40s and upwards can slow or even reverse the trends.
There are very few studies of the long term effects of aging amongst competitive athletes. However, to take the "HRMax declines one beat per minute per year" formula. Pollock (1974) found that HRMax declined by 5 to 7 beats/min per decade (ie. not the 10bpm that most studies predict). Even this study may be misleading because the athletes studied had reduced their training volume and intensity over the study period.
Costill (Physiology of sport and Exercise 2nd ed) says:
"It is often difficult to differentiate between the results of biological aging and physical inactivity. A natural deterioration in physiological function occurs with aging, but this is compounded by the fact that most people also become more sedentary with age".
"Studies of older athletes and less-active people of the same age group indicate that the decrease in VO2Max is not strictly a function of age".
"It appears that aging does not impair a person's ability to increase muscle strength"
Unfortunately getting my Garmin 301 coincided with onset of achilles tendonitis so I have not yet been able to do a max out MHR but readings from the runs I am managing at the moment would suggest a MHR of around 190+.
I never bothered with HR in my earlier running life - I knew what high tempo was and rarely ran an "easy" recovery run.
Now I do them all the time:-))
thanks for good wishes. It would have been interesting to have had accurate readings from an earlier life to compare with now.
I suspect that my MRH has gone down a bit as time goes by simply because the point where my legs/body start "dying" is at a lot slower pace than previous even though my training has more miles in (when fit) than earlier. May/June was the last full period and I was averaging 55-60+ miles/week
Chris
I can only envy you!!!:-))
In 2012 you will be 22 - perfect!
Just out of interest, how fit are you by your current standards - is your 190 a figure from when you were in full training?