I have a heart rate question, wht should I run at?

Question

I've been a runner in the past, in fact this past Jan. I ran a full and a half marathon in 1 weekend. I ran a ten miler about 3 weeks ago. Lately I've been real busy and have limited my running to maybe 10 miles per week.

Well now I'm starting marathon training for a run in October and I decided that I need to lose about 20 lbs in that time frame. I weigh 190 and should be at 170. So I bought a heart rate monitor and read all the instructions. I'm a male 29 years old and in pretty fit condition.

My heart rate should be between 125 and 165 for optimal fat burning and my 100% rate should be about 190. When I ran 3 miles yesterday my heart rate said I was @ around 195 average with spikes up to 205. I felt winded but not anything unusual for the run.

Am I working to hard? or is the national average not working for me.

right now I want to burn off fat not increase my speed, what should I do?

Answer 1

The first thing you should do would be to actually measure your max heart rate, then try to stay between 60 to 80% of that for maxiumum fat burning.

To measure your max, do a 10 to 20 minute warmup at about 80% effort and then go all out for a couple minutes, keeping an eye on your heart rate monitor.  If you find that your max is significantly over the 190 that you calculated, you might want to check your heart rate monitor for accuracy.

There's a good overview on Wikipedia, see the link.  Good luck!