run till you run out of road: target heart rate

Let me give this little guy a shout out - Garmin, I love you! In all seriousness, best $80 spent...ever. Okay, maybe not ever but for the time being, certainly! This thing is honestly a lifesaver, and when I say lifesaver I mean it because had it not been for this I would never know my distance, heart rate, calories, pace, time, not to mention my first run time vs. what I'm at now! Speaking of, let me take you back to February when I could not walk up the stairs at home without feeling the effects of it in my breath. I could not run to the end of the driveway, and I am not kidding. My first run with Raquel was 1.3 miles, and I shouldn't even really call it a run, it was more of a walk with a little run on the side. At that time Garmin hadn't joined me yet, so I was counting on her for all the data, which...as you know the better shape your in the faster your heart rate comes back down, so my breaks were few and far between. When she would notice our heart rate going up we'd walk, and when it was back down to our target heart rate we'd begin to run until, yep you guessed it... it went up and over where we should have been. I've figured that my heart rate should be 137-168 bpm. You can find yours here - of course I am not in any way associated with the Mayo clinic and I'm sure there are other target heart rate calculators out there, but I like this one because it gives a detailed explanation, and I'd go out on a limb to say it's fairly accurate ;) Anyway, needless to say, it was a lot of walking... but I felt good after and continued to work at it. This coming from someone who struggled with the mile run in high school, it gets better, I promise. In fact, I looked at Raquel a few weeks ago and said, do you remember my first 'run'? And she said, yes I do, you were scared to death. Now, I know there are pros and cons to running, working out, etc. and there are certainly things that you can do for exercise that are lower impact and less of a risk to your body, then again there are things you can do that are lower impact and more a risk, such as sitting on the couch not doing anything which is what I did for the last 2 years of my life, and look where it got me. I'd highly suggest getting a heart rate monitor, trusty Garmin does just fine. Do your research there are tons of different kids out there, for myself this one is perfect. Anyway, up early tomorrow for training and then a run to kick off my weekend.

Remember,

Running is a pain in the ass... but it'll give you a nice one ;)