I remember the first time I joined a road race (Condura Race), I saw a couple of guys running in front of me with black straps peeking out at the back of their white shirts. I honestly thought these guys probably have man-boobs and they were just wearing a bra*laughs*. It was because my idea of a heart rate monitor is something that you would normally found in hospitals and tread mills. Yeah, that’ how naive I was then.

Five road races later, I decided to buy my own heart rate monitor watch. I wish I could just buy a GF 405, however, I  can’t do this as I’ve just shelled out a huge amount of money after a vehicular accident I encountered as detailed from my previous post. So I bought a heart rate monitor at 50% discount last Saturday with the aim of  testing it for Mizuno Infinity Run 2009. However, the heart rate monitor wasn’t working (..err..that’s why it was being sold for 50%?) when I tested it Saturday night and so I ended up just using the timer on the race day. My wife brought it back yesterday and the Timex guy replaced it with a new working one. I was able to test it this morning at Oval and I’m very happy with it.

How I’m going to use it to improve my performance is probably the next question in newbie runners mind. To use a heart monitor effectively, you will need to determine first your Maximum Heart Rate. I got this formula from Runner’s World website which will help you get an approximation of your maximum heart rate:

Men: 214 – (0.8 x age)
Women: 209 – (0.9 x age)

Now that you know your maximum heart rate (MHR), you can use this on your different training zones. Here’s mine:

Easy Run/Recovery Run (50%-60% of MHR)
Aerobic Training (70%-80% of MHR)
Tempo Training (80%-100% of MHR)

If you want to have a peak on how I’m going to use this on my weekly trainings, here it is:

Monday: Easy Run , ensure that my heart rate doesn’t go below 114
Wednesday: Tempo Run>Easy Run for 15 minutes, Tempo run for 30 minutes-ensure that heart rate doesn’t go below 152 and another easy run for 15 minutes
Friday:Tempo Run> Easy Run for 15 minutes, Tempo run for 30 minutes, ensure that heart rate doesn’t go below 152 and another easy run for 15 minutes
Sunday: Long Run, ensure my heart rate doesn’t go below 114 slowly increasing to 134.

As you can see from above, I’m focusing on Tempo runs after learning that Kenyans do tempo runs twice a week. While I cannot run as fast as them, at least I’ll be able to get the most out of my cheap heart rate monitor. My long run too is also of equal importance, making sure that my long run doesn’t go below 30km.

I hope this helps. Send in your comments and suggestions!