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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2931 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Running slower to run further and maybe run faster

Lemme guess. It's a Polar.

I went through the same thing in 2008. I didn't get the heart rate monitor for running; I was running and when I moved to California I decided that some upper-body stuff would be good so I bought an ergometer. It would read a Polar so might as well, right?

What I discovered is that the Polar wanted me in a stupid place between speed-walking and slow jogging, which was intolerable. I could keep at its happy heart rate on the erg for an hour and a half at a time but with all the hills around where I lived, it was a constant frustration of running ten paces, then walking five, then running seven, then walking eight.

What worked for me was running further. In High School I ran like eight miles a day. After my misadventures with the HRM I bumped from 2 to 3.5-4 mi and enjoyed it a lot more.

And a pair of these. Took a minute off my mile times... at least for a couple weeks. Then I think I broke a metatarsal. Then the shoes were so hammered that I can't really use them the way they're supposed to be used without thinking about it way too hard. At least they weren't expensive. Oh wait, yes they were.





WanderingEng  ·  2931 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's a Garmin Forerunner 230, one of Garmin's midrange watches.

I should have said while my pace is slower and my heart rate "too high," it feels good. It feels like the kind of pace I can keep up for a long time. So while conventional wisdom says I should have my heart rate down around 148 bpm, as long as I stay around 165-170 bpm on average terrain, it doesn't wear me down. If I really was around 148 bpm, I think I'd be in the same boat as you.

The heart rate monitor isn't strictly necessary. For me it helped me understand when and why I'd struggle to go further, and it's given me the confidence to go further. But could one do that without the HRM? Definitely.