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Saturday, February 9

How Fast is Your Heart Rate?

While channel surfing the other night, I found a discussion between DR OZ and Oprah. (I’ve never watched Oprah before.) They were talking about vitamin therapy – which I always find interesting. They also touched on the topic of exercise - target heart rates and the amount of exercise people should getting.
He asked a volunteer from the audience to come on stage and try out the elliptical machine. It had the ability to monitor her heart rate. She was only on for about 1 minute – her heart rate was over 140. The Doctor said,

"The fact you got there so quickly is a little bit of concern, because you shouldn't be able to get to your ideal heart rate so fast," Dr. Oz says. "You should be in better shape than that."
So this morning I dug out the HR monitor and strapped it on for my run. I ran a steady rate - fairly comfortable pace – my Half Marathon pace. I think Dr. OZ would be happy with my waveform, I know I was. There was a gradual increase of my heart rate and then a steady maintenance rate.



I think every runner should know:
  • Blood pressure reading.
  • How fast the heart is beating when working hard.
  • How long it takes the heart rate to increase.
  • How fast does the heart rate slows down. (Oxymoron?)

Methods for checking your maximum and target heart rates:

The Karvonen Formula (Factors in your resting heart rate.)
Calculator
Target Heart Rates
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