Target Heart Rate

I worked this morning, and since we had group training at 5:00, I stayed in town. High gas prices, you know. ($4.15 a gallon, today) I took the opportunity to visit a new (to me) plant nursery, Arbor Farms, where I found a nice witch hazel tree. A few more errands completed and I headed to Aboite New Trails, where we train now.

A power nap sounded good, as I was about 45 minutes early, but then Kevin pulled into the parking lot and we decided to run. It was pretty warm, so we worked up a good sweat early. I ran two loops around Jorgensen's, which was 2.6 miles, I think. I walked just a little bit about halfway through.

Kevin and I were done by the time the rest of the group had arrived. Jamey is in North Carolina for the week with USA Baseball, so Brian was there, along with a few girls to answer any questions we had about target heart rate. I had missed that group session.

The Karvonen Formla can be used to determine your target heart rate, and in my case, works out like this:

Maximum Heart Rate = 220 minus 50 (my age) = 170
170 - 47 (Resting Heart Rate) = 127
127 x 65% (low end of heart rate zone) = 83
127 x 85% (high end of heart rate zone) = 108
83 + 47 = 130
108 + 47 = 155
Target heart rate zone = 130-155

We are to keep track of our heart rate first thing in the morning, about a minute after waking up. If we see a rise in this number, it indicates that our body is having to work harder to recover from our training and we need to cut back.