rbd32 wrote:
Oh sorry, my bad. My current fitness level is pretty decent. Have done an Olympic and a sprint over the past few weeks and actively training for a 70.3 in a month. I have a good bit of experience running over the past 2 years. My 10k time in my last race was 40.30. PR for a solo 5k is 19.12 I’m not sure if this is any measure of my max heart rate but thought it might give a better idea of my ability. I set my max heart rate by subtracting my age from 220 but I am pretty sure this isn’t very accurate.
So it sounds (to me) like your fitness is good. Those are pretty good run times for a triathlete and mean you're in pretty good shape. I don't have much experience tuning HR zones. But I do know that the "220-age" can be pretty far off for a specific person (even if it's decent in aggregate among a population). It's very far off for me, for example. If you haven't already done so, I would personally try getting a good measurement of your own max HR though a running exercise. Search around online for some run tests to get a max HR. Then I'd try a few online-available algorithms to generate a set of zones based on that. Then do some runs and see if it feels right. For me, the Garmin zone calculator/algorithm works pretty well as a starting point, but I have tweaked them a little bit (particularly in the zone 3, zone 4 range). You seem to be a fairly experienced runner, so you should spend a few training sessions to see if your zone numbers match the appropriate RPE description of the zone, and then adjust them as you see fit. In general, I think it's always a fuzzy game, but as long as it's generally accurate to your RPE, it should be fine.