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Comment by potamic | Hacker News Reader

I could never achieve this. Even after months of consistent training, my heart rate tends to shoot up pretty fast and max out even for small effort runs. Cardiologist tests haven't turned up anything and they insist I can continue to do what I'm doing (some even saying I shouldn't be afraid to go beyond max HR, but I don't know about that). If anyone else experiences the same or has some insight into this, do share.

EDIT: what my training looks like: zone 2 training with a chest strap monitor. 30-45 min sessions, barely breaking out of walking speed, 2-3 days a week for months altogether, mixing it up with interval runs some times. I've done this many times over in my life, never seeing any improvement. Even today, the smallest of jogs will take me to max HR within 10-15 min

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If you are running less than 30 miles per week or so and don't have multiple injury risk factors (e.g. prior history of injury, being older, female) you can fairly safely run at whatever pace you'd like and know that running more and running faster will help you become faster.

The idea of "zone 2 training" that is peddled sometimes on social media makes no sense if you're not running consistent mileage and actively looking to run faster. At that point, the idea is that you're minimizing injury risk in between 2+ hard efforts per week, while still getting in the miles.

I don’t know about the whole zone 2 thing, but I found running 10ks and pushing myself the whole time led to fewer gains than mixing slower paced runs with separate sessions of quarter mile sprints and 1 session of squats per week.

Also running extremely hard for a good distance for me at least, became mentally a lot less enjoyable

1) The Cardiac Exercise Research Group at the NTNU has a corrected HRmax calculator —

https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/hrmax

— and a Fitness Calculator —

https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/vo2max

— based on treadmill VO2max tests of thousands of Norwegians.

Check your scores.

2) You say your heart-rate shoots-up fast. Does your heart-rate drop-down fast when you stop exercise?

At-rest maybe 50, warmup-jog maybe 100, then it depends on the ambient temperature. If it's 85F then HR drifts up to 140 and flattens. If it's 50F then HR drifts to 110 and flattens. Then it depends on effort. If it's 85F and hard then 155; if it's 50F and hard then 135.

Last-time I looked my calculated HRmax was 170.

3) I'm not offering medical advice. In my understanding HRmax does not mean something bad will happen if heart rate goes higher. HRmax means heart rate is unlikely to go higher.

Maybe trust your cardiologists?

My heart rate would also go up quickly for the first few months. I would slow down and still find myself at a threshold level effort. After 3-4 months of consistent efforts my heart rate started to come down and I would only reach threshold if really pushing it. It may be that you need to slow down and give your body time to adjust. I also bike and for a long time there was a huge disparity in my on bike performance compared to my running performance. However, over time my running performance has improved a lot and I finally developed an easy gear.

I’m still slow when running, but then my goal is just to be able to run and not get injured. I built from 5k, to 10k and now can complete half marathon races on trails, which is a lot of fun. I’m a big advocate for minimal footwear and building strong feet. We are born to run, but modern footwear is silly.

Just reading your other replies, I’m curious: did you test your heart rate or did you use a calculator? The 220-your age is completely incorrect for most people.

I prefer a lactate test, rather than max HR, because it’s “easier” for me to induce. Basically, run a 30 minute, even paced, maximal effort. You then calculate your LT by removing 5% off the pace and HR averages you got.

The important part is the pace must be reasonably even and also maximum effort. So, it’ll feel easy to start and by the end you’ll want to vomit. If you’re lucky enough to live near a Park Run, you can do this a few times instead to learn your max effort pacing and work out Z2 from that.

I’m not a doctor but perhaps try running with a smart watch that shows you your heart rate and put in an amount of effort that keeps your heart rate at about 60-70% of max. For now that may be a brisk walking pace not even a jog. As you get fitter your heart rate should come down for the equivalent speed. I also used to go for runs and hit max within a few minutes and stay there for the whole run but ultimately I think I was just pushing too hard.

That's what I do, zone 2 training. I use a chest strap monitor too. 30-45 min sessions, 2-3 days a week for months altogether, mixing it up with intervals some times. I've done this many times over in my life, never seeing any improvement. Even today, the smallest of jogs will take me to max HR within 10-15 min.

Is there any reason for such strictness with your heart rate? I never measured anything and always progress up to a nice speed, and then it's when it flattens. Mix up the trainings and leave the HR monitor at home. Do ones where you just sprint as often as you can and others where you go slow, if you see some stairs during your run just sprint over them, etc. Of course, only if you're a regular person without existing heart issues.

Do you have any medical conditions?

Assuming you've had yourself checked up, and do not have any medical conditions, then maybe you are just aerobically deficient (https://uphillathlete.com/aerobic-training/aerobic-deficienc...). Start slower, doesn't matter if you are walking. In fact, if you are doing 3x45 mins of zone 2 each week, start doing 2x45mins of brisk walking to keep your heart rate at zone 2. After about 4-6 weeks, you should find that you can start jogging again and hopefully (!) your heart rate doesn't peak so fast.

(I'm assuming a lot of things here, namely that you know what your LT1/LT2 are so that you can accurately calculate your 5 zones; https://www.trainingpeaks.com/learn/articles/joe-friel-s-qui...)

Have the same issue. You've probably already found out it's called Cardiac Drift. I can run at the same pace for a 5k, and my heart rate is linear up to max/max+ every time. I ran ~500mi last year and it was the same almost every run. I tried to slow down from ~8:50mi to ~10:00mi with no real discernible difference. Kind of a bummer. Going to get my arteries mapped out soon (former smoker).

What does it mean to get arteries mapped out?

I'll be looking into getting a 'coronary CT scan'.

Try to use the same effort you have for your 30/45 min efforts just break them down into f.ex 3 min jog then 1 min walking. Start with just the same speed.

It sounds dumb, but have you tried just running slower? And using a watch or something to see your pace so you don’t subconsciously keep pushing faster.

Yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076161

> what my training looks like: zone 2 training with a chest strap monitor

Not really going anywhere unless you step into tempo/threshold/VO2 max training.

How did you determine your max? It's quite variable across people, the age-based formulas are useless for most people.

Age based formula only. They stop the stress tests at this point. I could probably go over this, but I'll be worried about exerting the heart too much.

There are corrected formula.

"HRmax was univariately explained by the formula 211 − 0.64·age, and we found no evidence of interaction with gender, physical activity, VO2max level, or BMI groups. ... Previously suggested prediction equations underestimated measured HRmax in subjects older than 30 years."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0838....

That formula also doesn't have much better performance, check out figure 2 in this study to get a feel for how much variance is left over, no matter how good your model is, age is just not enough:

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10....

As-it says in the Abstract I linked:

"HRmax predicted by age alone may be practically convenient for various groups, although a standard error of 10.8 beats/min must be taken into account."

Shall we say 150—190 95% CI for me? (Rarely do I make enough effort to reach 155bpm.)

Not sure I understand what you are trying to say, do you find the prediction to be helpful? 150-190 BPM is such a huge range, what useful information can be derived from it?

It provides perspective and a target training effort.

I've done a good session if I push to 155 bpm. I don't need to worry about finger-sticks for lactate accuracy, because there's no-risk I'll do twice-a-day twice-a-week threshold sessions.

If I'm not even in the low-end of that huge bpm range, I quit and take a recovery day.

Those error bars are too wide for the formula to be useful for training based on heart rate percentages.

I've already said that I have found it to be useful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43083815

:so please explain why I haven't :-)

You are doing nothing that requires the formula to be precise. A 10bpm standard error, meaning the max is very possibly 20bm off where you think it is, means that you can't reliably distinguish between efforts that someone doing serious training would want to be distinguished.

> You are doing nothing that requires the formula to be precise.

Exactly.

My guess is that neither are most other readers and commenters here. (Any evidence to the contrary?)

Meanwhile, what do those error bars tell use about "training based on heart rate percentages." :-)

> someone doing serious training

Care to say what you mean?

As-it says in the Abstract you linked: "The 202.5–0.53∗age formula developed in the present study was the best in the studied population, yielding lowest mean errors in most groups, suggesting it could be used in more active individuals."

Let's say it again — "suggesting it could be used".

And "A simple formula predicting HRmax based on age only may be used when the exact HRmax is not needed or is difficult to obtain."

For me the difference between 202.5 − 0.53·age and 211 − 0.64·age is less than 2 bpm!

to echo what the others say, at such low mileage you probably should mix in some threshold running (run at a fast pace you can maintain for ~30mins) and not just depend on zone 2; also, you should try to meet/exceed 45 minutes for zone 2.

His high does your HR spike? And what pace are you running at and for his long

When I first started running outside, I had no idea on pace. I ran at what I felt was "reasonable" and what I felt was similar to my experience of treadmill runs. It was really rough and hard work!

Tl;Dr - I got a basic thing that told me my pace (this was pre-smartphones but basic wearables existed) and turned out what I thought was relatively gentle and reasonable speed was actually a really fast pace and totally unsustainable.

When I knew what my pace actually was, I could stick to a much more sustainable (for me) ~5:30 min/km pace and it felt soooo slow and embarrassing and like I was barely even moving in comparison! But this was a much more realistic pace for a tubby software engineer. And for a long time I had to keep checking the pace as the speed would creep up during a run and it took discipline to "stay slow".

I use the runkeeper app that has the option to do pace read outs through your headphones every few minutes. I'd recommend trying something like that, and perhaps try to begin with a pace of like 6 or 7 min/km for 10-15 mins runs and stick to it and see if that helps, before starting to extend duration and speed after you've built some endurance. I've found fitness and condition improves fairly rapidly - O(weeks). Good luck.

I've done a lot of zone 2 training with no improvement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076161

I would probably ignore anything about "zones" or "intervals"-this or "intensity"-that. Bollocks to it all - we are evolved and built to run. Just get out and move in a way that feels comfortable to you.

Perhaps right now your fitness levels mean all you can do is a brisk walk for 10 mins? That's totally fine. Don't try and think you have to be following some workout plan by doing some sort of "zone" thing or some "interval" thing for X minutes. Listen to your body and take it slow.

I did that for many years before attempting this. The results are not very different end of the day, zone training just seems to be a dumbed down framework to ensure consistency.

As a new runner, your heart rate will be really high. Unless you have some notable cardiac risk it's not a big deal.

Ignore the zone 2 messaging for now. Zone 2 training is basically useless for getting better at running when you're just starting because a new runner staying in zone 2 is just walking. You need to run to get better at running. For now, just ignore heart rate and focus on how you feel. Do run/walk and gradually work on increasing the time you run before you stop to walk.

PS.

"Zone 2", “80/20" and the like is advice that's really meant for intermediate runners starting to train more seriously and it basically just means "it's better to run easy most of the time so you can run more, and so when you do run hard you can get full benefit because you're not already exhausted. "

It is good advice in context but has been spouted without context by so many running youtubers and influencers that it has probably done more harm than good.

same here. I crap out really fast despite a healthy 22 BMI. Feet get sore, everything hurts, out of breath, pain everywhere. So much for running ability being universally evolutionary innate as some claimed by scientists. It's highly variable, not something everyone can do well.

But what's your body age?

https://hvemereldst.no/en/

This year I will have run half the earths circumference at some point. My feet still get sore, everything hurts, out of breath, pain everywhere. Just takes longer now for that to set in.

Anyone who doesn't run much feels that for a long time when they statt. How long have you been at it?

Personally I feel like it started to feel better only when I built some strength in the whole legs and core muscle areas, such that they would all work together to make me move. It's hard to describe. But if I run after sitting a lot when everything is tight and seized up, I'll go back to feeling like a beginner.

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