Heart Rate Test on Valenties Day – Yay Me!

How apropos, I did a running heart rate test on Valentines day. Speaking of Valentines day, I love candy hearts…I found a neat website where you create your own candy heart graphic…

I picked ‘Yay Me!’ for my candy heart graphic, because there are alot of Yays for me today!

Here’s the treadmill HR test details:

Warm Up
5 min at 3.5 mph
2.5 min at 6 mph
2.5 min at 3.5 mph
HR test: increase speed by .2 mph every minute. Hit lap timer on watch to get HR at end of lap.
Cool Down
15 min at 6 mph
5 min at 3.5 mph

Got really bored during that cool down, so I played with the incline, up and down, keeping speed at 6mph. I discovered that I enjoy running on hills much more than just running flat. Yay Me!

Here’s my HR graph from the treadmill run test, plotting HR on the Y-axis and mph cubed on the X-axis. Last time I did the test in Jan ’09 the, the line (purple color) went up, which is bad. Ideally, the plotted line should go down as aerobic fitness improves. I think it went up due to a fairly dramatic change in my running form. Back in December, I started trying to run like Cait Snow – very upright posture with fast feet and a short stride – very hard to get used to (faster feet = higher heart rate). I’ve actually been trying to run this way for over a year, but watching Cait Snow run at Lake Placid gave me a really good visual image to recreate in my mind as I ran, so I think I’m finally getting it! Yay Me!

Anyway, I digress. This month, the line (maroon color) went back down, so, I definitely think my body is adapting to the new running style. Yay Me! I’m hoping that the line will keep going down until it’s back where it was (yellow and aqua lines).

The Lactate Threshold Heart rate is the point where the line takes a dip. Great news, my LT went up, by about 10 bpm’s! Yay Me! That means I can sustain a higher heart rate for a longer time. This means that my run training zones are up by about 10 bpm’s too. I’m really glad to see that because it’s been hard to keep my HR below 150 in my Zone 2 runs. I’ll be running along feeling like it’s easy, and I look at my HR and it’ll show 153, and I’ll think WTF!? Now I know 153 is still in Zone 2!

PS: Here is the raw HR data from this test. If you know how to read this data and if I’m understanding it wrong, please tell me!

lap mph hr(avg)/hr(end)
1) 5 133/129
2) 5.2 131/132
3) 5.4 136/137
4) 5.6 139/140
5) 5.8 143/146
6) 6.0 146/148
7) 6.2 150/152
8) 6.4 153/154
9) 6.6 157/159
10) 6.8 159/161
11) 7.0 162/164
12) 7.2 165/165
13) 7.4 168/173
14) 7.6 171/172
15) 7.8 174/173
16) 8.0 179/176
17) 8.2 175/175