Sunday, August 29, 2010

heart rate

and that's when i started reviewing my understanding of my target heart rate
i wear my hrm all the time when i run and cycle
i am always surprised at how quickly my heart rate goes up on the run
it does a pretty good job on the cycle as well
guess i could take my pulse when i swim...
anyways there are different zones with heart rate and the higher you go the more calories you burn but the less fat you burn
in zones 1 and 2 - 85% of the calories burned are represented by fat calories... now you may have to do a  bit more in this area to burn a bunch of calories
in zone 3 you are burning closer to 50% of fat calories
and in zone 4 you are at 15% of fat calories
not too sure where you are at zone 5 - i suspect not much as the theory is this is pretty darned close to over your 100% target and you cant sustain that pace for very long
so i was trying to figure out the breakeven for the various zones - i look to be spending a bunch of time in the higher zones when i went back through my Garmin records

looking at my workouts on foot this weekend - since my HRM & I were chatting during my bike rides....
i did a 4 mile walk for just over an hour on saturday - according to Garmin I burned 322 calories @ 85% since it was a slower pace I burned 273 fat calories
i did 2 miles in just under 30 minutes and burned 197 calores but on average was in zone 3 so only 50% at fat burning or 98 calories
this hasme pondering... perhaps longer walks are going to be in my future after this triathlon thing
just dont know for sure

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Read something really good the other day which adds detail to the theory.. you dont stop burning the fat calories think of it more as the fat gets burned a little later to catch up.... I'll have to find the reference. ie more time in higher zones, particularly interval time, will burn more fat than anything else. Long walks at the lower levels wont do much.