Yesterday I ran my first stand alone half marathon. I've run two half marathons and a full marathon in triathlons though.
I always struggle to keep my pace down at the start of the run during the triathlons and blew up on my last half marathon in a tri. This was in May.
Yesterday went reasonably well and I ended up with a negative split, however, I was surprised by my heart rate during the race.
I'm a 39 year old male. Up to September this year I thought my max heart rate was about 196, never been above that in the last 2 years. But in september during a sprint tri at the sprint to the finish I hit 202.
My lactate threshold, estimated through a Garmin test (I use a Garmin 935 with the tri chest-strap), has been hovering between 174-177 the whole year, most recently it was estimated at 175 in september.
At the run of the half distance tri in september my average hart rate was 175, reaching a max of 189 in the sprint to the finish.
My rest heart rate earlier in the year hovered around 50-52, but the last few months (since an Ironman and slight overtraining in the month before) it has been a little higher, 54-55.
Yesterday morning I felt good, and my rest heart rate after waking up was 52 again, for the first time in months that it was so low.
I was hoping to keep my heart rate below 165 in the first 5k and under 170 in the first 10k and then see how I felt so I wouldn't blow up. I did 1k in the middle of a 7k run earlier this week and had a max heart rate of ~160 at a pace slighty faster than I was planning to run. But I also had in mind that at races my heart rate is often a little higher than during training.
Just after the start I saw a club mate running about 50m ahead of me and after about 1km I had caught up with him. He was basically running at the pace I was hoping to run so we ran together the rest of the race. The pace felt good, rpe about 7, we chatted every now and again. Not full stories, but I could easily speak short sentences. The heart rate was a bit higher than anticipated though, hitting 170 in 10 minutes and in Zone 5 (as estimated by Garmin starting at 175) after about 15 min.
After 14k I felt good and we accelerated to get a negative split. Soon I saw my heart rate hit 190, but again, didn't feel too uncomfortable. Roughly the last 30 min I ran 190+, and the last 15-20 min 194-195+. The last 10 minutes were hard though, but up to then I could still speak a few words every now and then and breathing in general was under control.
I ended up with an average heart rate of 181. Almost 1.5 hours in Z5 and above my estimated lactate threshold. Today my legs ache a little, but not too bad and I have no issues with walking up and down the stairs. Biked to work this morning fine too.
I'm surprised that I could maintain such a high heart rate (190+) for such a long time (about half an hour). Does this fall in a normal range? Or should I check my heart rate monitor? Or should I maybe do some proper testing for heart rate zones? I have done a bunch of different tests over the past years and the threshold heart rate hasn't varied that much, neither did the max heart rate until it jumped up in september this year.
I always struggle to keep my pace down at the start of the run during the triathlons and blew up on my last half marathon in a tri. This was in May.
Yesterday went reasonably well and I ended up with a negative split, however, I was surprised by my heart rate during the race.
I'm a 39 year old male. Up to September this year I thought my max heart rate was about 196, never been above that in the last 2 years. But in september during a sprint tri at the sprint to the finish I hit 202.
My lactate threshold, estimated through a Garmin test (I use a Garmin 935 with the tri chest-strap), has been hovering between 174-177 the whole year, most recently it was estimated at 175 in september.
At the run of the half distance tri in september my average hart rate was 175, reaching a max of 189 in the sprint to the finish.
My rest heart rate earlier in the year hovered around 50-52, but the last few months (since an Ironman and slight overtraining in the month before) it has been a little higher, 54-55.
Yesterday morning I felt good, and my rest heart rate after waking up was 52 again, for the first time in months that it was so low.
I was hoping to keep my heart rate below 165 in the first 5k and under 170 in the first 10k and then see how I felt so I wouldn't blow up. I did 1k in the middle of a 7k run earlier this week and had a max heart rate of ~160 at a pace slighty faster than I was planning to run. But I also had in mind that at races my heart rate is often a little higher than during training.
Just after the start I saw a club mate running about 50m ahead of me and after about 1km I had caught up with him. He was basically running at the pace I was hoping to run so we ran together the rest of the race. The pace felt good, rpe about 7, we chatted every now and again. Not full stories, but I could easily speak short sentences. The heart rate was a bit higher than anticipated though, hitting 170 in 10 minutes and in Zone 5 (as estimated by Garmin starting at 175) after about 15 min.
After 14k I felt good and we accelerated to get a negative split. Soon I saw my heart rate hit 190, but again, didn't feel too uncomfortable. Roughly the last 30 min I ran 190+, and the last 15-20 min 194-195+. The last 10 minutes were hard though, but up to then I could still speak a few words every now and then and breathing in general was under control.
I ended up with an average heart rate of 181. Almost 1.5 hours in Z5 and above my estimated lactate threshold. Today my legs ache a little, but not too bad and I have no issues with walking up and down the stairs. Biked to work this morning fine too.
I'm surprised that I could maintain such a high heart rate (190+) for such a long time (about half an hour). Does this fall in a normal range? Or should I check my heart rate monitor? Or should I maybe do some proper testing for heart rate zones? I have done a bunch of different tests over the past years and the threshold heart rate hasn't varied that much, neither did the max heart rate until it jumped up in september this year.
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