Am I a "High Beater"?

Today (Wed., Aug. 31, '05) I've taken an unaccustomed day off from all exercise because of my aching back, whose onset was last Sat. after pushing myself too hard. It hasn't gotten any better as I've tried to "run through the injury." I may take tomorrow off as well.

Meanwhile, I comtinue to be concerned because I think my heart rates are too high for the speeds and levels of effort I'm engaging in. So I Googled running "heart rate" "too high" and found this page in which an expert named Joe Beer discusses a similar problem someone else wrote in about.

The question being asked was:

Following your advice, I did a treadmill test using a heart rate monitor to work out my maximum heart rate. The result was 177bpm. However, during 40-minute steady runs my pulse easily reaches 165bpm, about 94 per cent of max! Am I training too hard? (It doesn’t feel like it.)

Joe Beer answered (in part):

While heart rate monitors are all pretty similar, runners aren’t, and that can lead to some anomalies.

I suspect that you are a ‘high beater’. This simply means that your heart muscles beat at a faster rate across the various levels of exercise and training than your peers’ do. This isn’t a ‘bad’ thing, merely a personal idiosyncrasy that needs to be taken into account when planning and assessing your training.

So I suspect that I, too, am a high beater: my heart contracts more times per minute than most others do under the stress of exercise. And this condition obtains "across the various levels of exercise and training."

Beer says to his questioner that 40-minute exercise stints at 165 bpm, 94 per cent of the maximum of 177, can be expected to be "incredibly debilitating, if not near impossible."

Beer continues:

In fact, it’s best to get away from the idea at working at a percentage of your MHR anyway, and think instead about your working heart rate (WHR). You still need to find your maximum, but once you’ve got that, subtract from it your resting heart rate. To find the rate to run at – for example 75 per cent effort – simply multiply your WHR by 0.75 and add the resulting figure to your resting heart rate – that’s the rate to aim for.

My max HR is 170 bpm and at rest I do about 60 bpm. The difference is 110. For a 75% WHR, I'd use

(110 X 0.75) + 60 = 82.5 + 60 = 142.5 (or, rounded, 143)

where 75% of 170 is roughly 128. So figuring in my resting HR raises my 75% target level by some 15 beats per minute.

Beer also suggests that heart rate monitors don't always accurately log one's true maximum heart rate, which can be higher than indicated ... which only increases the actual 75% level (and all the others) even more.

Finally, says Beer:

You could also try only breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth when running. This will automatically set you to an appropriate moderate intensity. Note your heart rate at this comfortable level, and use it as the basis for the majority of your running training.

I may or may not try that.

But the main thing I'm getting from this is that high beaters like myself need to take their resting heart rate into account in computing training ranges, which will increase any given target level, such as 75%, but which will also guard against training at too high an intensity.