Hello all,

I'm a new runner who started c25k in early October (did not start logging on this site till late November) and am about to start week 4 of one hour runner.  I run 3-4 days a week and live in NY. I walk to work and anywhere else if I can. I started running in order to lose weight. I've always been fat but I broke my ankle really badly while skiing in February of 2013, couldn't walk at all for 4 months, walked slowly for 2 more and put on 20 pounds. Because of great advice that I got on this forum (most weight loss happens in the kitchen!) I've been watching my diet and have lost 19 pounds of the 45 I need to lose (5'1, female, 24y, started at 165). I am really liking this running thing and am kind of thinking about a half marathon in May or October.

In the beginning I was running way too fast. I have really slowed down (at the end of my walkout barely above walking ) and attempted to implement some great advice from this forum about it being better to do long, slow miles. I got a heart rate monitor because it's very hard for me to convince myself that the pace I'm at is easy. I used the running for fitness FAQ calculator and with a RHR of 57 (from 2 months ago) and a max heart rate of 196 it told me that I should stay in 150-164 to do my long slow runs. I am doing my best to stay below 164. Numbers really help me visualize what I need to do.

Here are my questions, I have started taking my HR every morning. I've read different things about back to back running but have attempted to implement one back to back day a week. Once I did three (BIG mistake). But two seems to be okay. I've had the odd knee twinge here and there but I immediately ice it and if it's really bothersome I don't run that day. To stop the knee twinges I focus on my form and cadence (am able to do 200spm in the first 20m of the run and 180 in the last ten when I'm getting tired.)

Thing is, I'm still wondering whether 164 is too high and I should go even slower, since I've read posts about it being best to run every day and I definitely cannot do that without injury. I am also annoyed about the knee twinges. I really focus on good running form and cadence! I also read about taking resting heart rate in the same conditions every morning, figuring out what yours is and seeing if you are overtrained if it's higher than it should be. But looking at my HR I'm trying to figure out what my avg heart rate is (taken at the same time and conditions when I wake up and written below), it seems to change by the day. How variable should resting heart rate be? Are the days it's above 50, days that I'm overtraining? I really really really appreciate anyone who took the time to slog through this post. Happy holidays!

12/15: 50

12/16: 49

12/17: 51

12/18: 54

12/19: 47

12/20: 46

12/21: 47

12/22: 53

12/23: 47

12/24: 50

 12/15: 50

12/16: 49

12/17: 51

12/18: 54

12/19: 47

12/20: 46

12/21: 47

12/22: 53

12/23: 47

12/24: 50

I don't see anything unusual in these daily readings of your rest heart rate. I seriously doubt you're overtraining if you rarely run on back-to-back days.

Continue to run easy. If you can have a conversation, then your pace is easy.

When you're just starting to run and you're deconditioned, *any* pace may cause you to huff and puff even a little and you may not be able to have a conversation. Just give it time. As your fitness improves, you should find that training at the same pace will get easier over time.

I also recommend that you run by pace and not heart rate. I've tried HR training before, and there were too many factors that polluted my heart rate data (stress, sleep, dehydration, etc.). It's not an easy variable to control compared to pace.

My resting HR is also higher than normal when I'm training hard, but all I have to do is take it easy for a few days (note: take it easy; not take time off) and it comes back down; just because your resting HR is a little high isn't necessarily an indication of you overtraining. When I get to that point of overtraining I feel it by overall fatigue feeling, even after a mile of easy jogging (if that doesn't shake the fatigue off then I know I'm probably been hitting it too hard). My mood changes also and get more irritable and my mind is in somewhat of a fog.

With respect to your training zone, i.e. where you should maintain your HR, that's not an exact science and it also varies between people; then you got the fact that your efficient HR to train at changes as your fitness increases. I know the HR zones you've been cited, but they are WRONG and this article explain in good detail why they are wrong, it really opened my eyes, because I train in a much higher zone than I'm suppose to according to the charts. BTW, they also give various formulae for knowing your proper HR zone, but none of them work for me, they all give basically the same values.   http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/24/health/maximum-heart-rate-theory-is-challenged.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Also, with respect to HR, this seems to be the real important factor...

Excerpt from the above link:

''The heart rate is probably the least important variable in comparing athletes,'' Dr. Hagerman said.

Heart rate is an indicator of heart disease, said Dr. Michael Lauer, a cardiologist and the director of clinical research in cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. But, he added, it is not the maximum that matters: it is how quickly the heart rate falls when exercise is stopped.

An average healthy person's heart rate drops about 20 beats in a minute and the rates of athletes ''nose dive by 50 beats in a minute,'' Dr. Lauer said.

In three recent studies, Dr. Lauer and his colleagues found that people whose rates fell less than 12 beats within a minute after they stopped exercising vigorously had a fourfold increased risk of dying in the next six years compared with those whose heart rates dropped by 13 or more beats.

Dr. Lauer pays no attention to the standard formula when he gives treadmill tests. More than 40 percent of patients, he said, can get their heart rates to more than 100 percent of their predicted maximum. ''That tells you that that wasn't their maximum heart rate,'' Dr. Lauer said."

BTW, with respect to your knee issues, what worked for me is weightlifting, because it really builds up the muscles, but more importantly the connective tissue and joints.  http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=691

I am a rookie myself so take my advice with a grain of salt. I disagree with others about putting the heart rate monitor away. I use it... not for heart rate training but to keep me from running too fast. When my legs ache my heart rate goes up, when it's too hot my heart rate goes up, when I am running uphill (yeah, sometimes I don't know that I am but my body does), my heart rate goes up, if I haven't slept well the night before my heart rate goes up... and more. I take all these as a sign and slow down. In a nut shell, I use my heart rate as a guide.

I also disagree (from my personal experience) that one should run by pace. All the factors above affect the pace. I have tried the pace thing before but depending on the condition of my body and the factors above, running by pace hasn't been easy for me. I guess all this happens to newbies like us. Maybe putting the heart rate monitor away makes sense after you have a ton of running experience and have learned to listen to your body.

I totally agree with the symptoms of over training articulated above... with steadily increasing resting heart rate being the biggest indicator for me.

IMO, you are doing everything correctly. If you are not injured  and not suffering from insomnia, you are not over training. Keep going.

I take my RHR most mornings, and your readings look almost identical to what I can see (including the variations).  I have been running for only a little over a year, but in that time have managed to put over 1500 miles on the ground and have learned a lot in the process.  So here's my take.

I use a HR monitor most of the time, but I run mostly by feel.  The HR monitor was a huge crutch when I first started though and helped me from running too fast.   DO NOT just let some website or pre-created formula tell you what range to run in though, you'll have to learn that for yourself.  You're going to have to listen to your breathing and how different effort levels effect you over distance.  Where the HR monitor can help for new runners, I believe, is starting out slowly enough on longer runs.  As I worked up to distances of 10 miles or more, if I didn't start out slowly enough (HR monitor assisted), the last half of the run was murderously hard.

Nowadays, I can start a run too hard, slow down, and still pound out a few more hours without issue.  As you get more experience and get into better shape, you'll learn how to run by feel and listen to your body.  Ultimately I have found that miles and consistency are fare more important than any preconceived HR numbers or pace.  I still like to have the monitor so that I get one more line to graph (I'm an analyst by trade), but it isn't that important.  The more miles I put on the ground, the easier (and faster) this gets.

Bottom line, don't worry too much about things and listen to what you're body is telling you.  Sounds like you're being intelligent about pain and skipping a run if needed; that's an important key for longevity.  Keep running consistently and this will all get easier (as much due to learning as fitness gains).  Great job so far and keep at it.

.... I used the running for fitness FAQ calculator and with a RHR of 57 (from 2 months ago) and a max heart rate of 196 it told me that I should stay in 150-164 to do my long slow runs. I am doing my best to stay below 164. Numbers really help me visualize what I need to do.

 

Here are my questions, I have started taking my HR every morning. I've read different things about back to back running but have attempted to implement one back to back day a week. Once I did three (BIG mistake). But two seems to be okay. I've had the odd knee twinge here and there but I immediately ice it and if it's really bothersome I don't run that day. To stop the knee twinges I focus on my form and cadence (am able to do 200spm in the first 20m of the run and 180 in the last ten when I'm getting tired.)

...

Calculators for HRmax based on age, which is what most formulas are, are usually off for individuals. (my HRmax is about 20bpm greater than formulas predict. My 1-hr race effort is a little above what formulas predict for HRmax. Plus there's a number of formulas out there, some of which might be closer than others, but you don't know which.)

As a new runner, you're probably better off just using conversational effort. For easy runs, be able to recite the pledge of allegiance or 1st sentence of Gettysburg address or something about 30 words long. If you don't have that gear initially, don't worry too much about it, since you will develop it over time as you run more.

Watching your resting HR each morning or under similar conditions is a good way to check for overtraining or illness. As a new runner, you're likely not to be overtraining (takes a long time to recover from and as someone already mentioned, others will notice). Your resting HR numbers look fine.

The crankiness in your knees is probably more "overdoing it" or "too much too soon" (TMTS). It generally takes your leg muscles, tendons, ligaments longer to adapt to running than your physiology (heart, etc).  I don't think that's reflected in variable resting HR. But it is something that you need to be aware of and address to reduce chances of injury.

I definitely wouldn't worry about cadence at the level you are. If it's really slow, like 140 spm, then you might be spending a lot of time airborne, which usually isn't good, esp. since that means you may land harder. 200spm is approaching the rate used by sprinters. 180spm is more normal, but still people will be below or above that. See what comes naturally. Too much focus on this could be what's causing knee twinges.

Heart rate training is useful, IF you have the right numbers and recognize how to use them. They usually correspond reasonably with talk test (at least for some). Since most of your early running - and maybe all of your running - will be mostly aerobic (99% of your running where you can talk), you may not need HRmax data, but some other reference is useful. Some are based on something called LT HR, but recognize LT is really a zone. The top end of aerobic work is frequently called "comfortably hard" (yea, an oxymoron, I know), but it's equivalent to being able to only say a few words. Most of your running, you should be able to say 15-30 words; for fartleks or harder stuff, the intense part might be saying 5-10 words.

You can still use your HRM to monitor things and learn what the different zones correspond to. One of my early drills had been running along, guessing my HR, then looking. I got pretty good at recognizing those numbers without the HRM, but use it to monitor my runs. Makes logging data really easy.

Enjoy your running.

Check out  the low heart rate forum.We general do do debut on the open forum as to pros and cons of LHR training. It works for most of us. Finding want works for you is the key. I BQ'ed with MAFF. Enough said!

http://www.runningahead.com/groups/LWHRTR/forum/Post/ae573a000a424a4faa6c1abcdb88a56d#focus