What Is the Significance of High Heart Rate during Running?

 Heart rate is perhaps the first tool to measure the health of an individual. It is a comparison with the average or resting heart rate. Heart rate is the measure of number of times, a heart contracts in a minute. When human heart contracts, it sends blood to all organs of the body. However, heart rate will not always remain the same. While running, a human heart contracts more often in a minute to comply with the increased oxygen demand in muscles.

If heart rate goes beyond control, it can damage the heart. Therefore, it’s important that every athlete must be aware of safer heart rate while running. Take a look at normal heart rates or heart rate in resting state in people of different age groups.

• HR in infants: 100 - 160 bpm
• HR in children of age group 1-10 years: 70 - 120 bpm
• HR in kids over 10 and adults (even elderly): 60 - 100 bpm
• HR in athletes: 40 - 60 bpm

A lower heart rate is an indication of healthy heart. These normal Heart rates also indicate that if a beginner is forced to perform like an athlete, he can experience heart damage. It takes time to train the heart to decrease its rate.

Heart rate during running:

Do you know what your maximum heart is? This can be determined in a treadmill test but I suggest it should be done in the presence of a medical practitioner. Alternatively, a formula can determine your maximum heart rate. The average MHR according to genders in grown-ups is as follow:

• MHR for Men = 220
• MHR for Women = 226

After determining the maximum heart rate, it’s safe for a beginner at running to start practicing at 50% of MHR. However, every individual has varying capacity of heart and lungs and so the heart rate will depend upon the type of activity they perform.

Safe heart rate zone:

As mentioned above, the healthy heart rate zone for beginners in running is almost 50% of their Maximum Heart rate. When any runner maintains safe heart rate zone, he/she will be able to speak normally while running. Hence, it is recommended that beginners should start with low speed to first accustom themselves to this speed.