Heart Rate

I'm trying to remember to wear my HR monitor more often these days. I wore it today, and it's quite interesting to see the improvement.

In April 2005, when I ran my first 1/2 marathon, I wore a HR monitor. At the time, I had been training with the monitor and I knew that when my heart rate was about 177, my pace was about a 10 minute mile. I wore the monitor for the race, kept my heart rate at 177, and finished in 2:10. Pretty accurate, huh?

Today, I ran four miles which included a 30 minute tempo run. My heart rate NEVER went above 170, even at the end of the 30 minutes when I hit my fastest pace of 7:50 which came at the end of a hill climb. Now that's a pretty dramatic improvement.

P.S. Ignore the % of Max HR data. My Garmin refuses to believe me when I tell it my max is 189.