Heart Rate during 7 mile Run

Running – some people love it; others hate it; others just lay down until the urge passes.

Regardless of your own feeling about running it is practical fitness. So many activities I like to do require moving my body under my own power from point a to point b. Running builds that ability and trains my cardio system.

So I fit that second category of people — I hate running.

That said I still run occasionally to mix up my training. This past weekend was one of those times. I went for a seven mile run and tracked my heart rate using my Garmin FR60 (review to come).

I live in Colorado Springs … so that means I have hills to run. Hills to run up and hills to run down. The Garmin FR60 doesn’t have a GPS so I don’t have elevation change information, but I will say I enjoy running on the hills of Colorado Springs much better than the flatlands of Minneapolis. My normal loop is 3.5 miles with one longer incline in it. For this workout I did two laps. According to the foot pod on my Garmin FR60 my total distance after cool down was 7.24 miles.

What I found is that my heart rate averaged 91% of my Max HR.

That means for most of the run, except the down hill sections, I was training in zone 5. That made me realize that I should do some more research and write a series on heart rate zone training. If I hate running, how should I be best utilizing the time that I do run to optimize my training?

Good question, so stay tuned.

In the meantime the run was good and got my body working. There is part of me that is willing to run to do events, not running events, but something like … Tough Mudder. That could be fun.

About Troy Pesola

Troy is the founder of Cube.Dweller.Fitness. He's an innovation catalyst in several areas of life including business, marketing, and process improvement. Outside of work he's actively involved in fitness, health, and living vibrantly in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.