Half Marathon Time Goal - Garmin heart rate monitor

Lots of possibilities

by IAN MC - 2017-11-07 13:32:27

A normal person at the age of 37 would be slightly breathless but should not be " gasping for air " at 158 bpm . But, are you a normal person ?  You have an electrical conduction problem of the heart and you have a pacemaker.

I have run lots of half marathons and marathons and , even before getting a PM , I always admired those runners who seemed to be less breathless than I was BUT  we are all fitted with different engines , some people's hearts are better at oxygen transfer than others. That is why we don't all become olympic athletes.

In your case,  there are several possibilities :_

- you are not fit enough and need to train more

- no matter what you do, you will always get out of breath  at 158 bpm. We are all different !

- your Garmin monitor may be wildly inaccurate . I had one which was under-reading my HR by 20 bpm

- you may have some level of " chronotropic incompetence " which means that your HR doesn't increase as it should when you exercise , You may need the Rate response function on your PM switching on

-  if you already have Rate Response switched on you may need the maximum  sensor rate increasing ( this is different to the maximum tracking rate )

I would recommend that you try to persuade your pacemaker people to wire you up while you run on a treadmill and find out what is going on. It could be a problem which will be helped by PM setting adjustments.

Best of luck

Ian

conditioning

by Tracey_E - 2017-11-07 13:34:16

First of all, GO YOU!!!!  I love how active you are and wow, that's already a great time!

Don't get too caught up on heart rates and target zones. I'm CCHB also. Our hearts weren't built like everyone else's and we don't follow the charts. And, the monitors are notoriously inaccurate for us so it can be hard to track. I go by exertion. If I can talk but not sing, if I feel strong, I figure I'm at a good pace. Sometimes my rate is 140, sometimes it's as high as 170, same exertion. Might just be me, but how hard I push seems to have little to do with how high my rate gets. So as long as I feel good, i don't pay attention to what my rate is.

Have you experimented with sprint intervals? My daughter and I started with both of us doing 12 min miles. Me, I'm just happy to finish the race but she is more serious about her times and uses a running watch (Garmin?) to time her intervals during training runs. I don't know what her half time is these days but her 5k pace under 7. There are lots of resources out there with training schedules.

Good luck!!