Day 39: 5mi, 41:49

An interesting workout today, which was actually faster than it looks. I got a HR monitor today (Polar RS200, if anyone is interested), and after doing the tests that come with the monitor, it gave me a target HR training zone of 116 to 152bpm. This is a higher max than I have been working with (141 or so) the last few times out, and it made a big difference in my pace. My splits:

mile 1: 10:42
mile 2: 7:30
mile 3: 7:30
mile 4: 7:51
mile 5: 8:16

My HR at t+1 was 136, and at t+5 was 106. My average HR during the run was 136.

The HR monitor figures out my target zones by doing a 5 minute test where I start out walking slowly and end up at a jog, so the first five minutes of my run didn't cover much ground as it included three minutes of walking. So I feel like it was really a 38-39 minute 5 mile pace. Was a lot easier monitoring my pace, as the treadmill picks up the signal from the transmitter, and the new target max of 152 was much easier to stay within and fine tune by slowing down a little.

So now the question is, which is the appropriate target HR - 142 or 152? I think I will go with the HR monitor's calculations, since it took a lot of personal information (age, weight, height, activity level, resting HR, etc.) to calculate the training zone. It also felt like a moderately difficult workout, maybe a 6 out of 10, which seems about right for aerobic training. So I'll go with that for awhile and see how it works.