I’m not in great shape and I’ve just started jogging. I’ll do a 20 minute slow jog and my heart rate will go up to 130 - 140ish. When I stop, I’ll walk for a few minutes to cooldown and my heart rate will go down to about 110ish. Then I’ll sit down. After a couple of minutes my HR is about 95. Then, over the next few minutes it’ll slow to between 80 - 85 or so. After that, it stays at around 80 - 85 for hours!
What’s that about? Is it normal? I’d have thought my HR would slow in a linear progression until it reached my normal, which is between 60 - 70. Does your heart rate follow a similar pattern after cardio? If so, anyone got any idea why it plateaus in the 80s for, like, three straight hours before going back down to its normal baseline? Thanks!
You’re fatigued from the effort. Even if you don’t feel it, there’s damage done by exercise that needs to be repaired before the next bout. Fitness is gained during the recovery process.
When I first started running I was so excited at how quickly (relatively speaking) I began to build up endurance that I ran as many days as I could, ramping up from my mile or two to five or so per run in a few weeks.
Then my legs started to hurt in ways I was not ready for, especially as a guy in my 30s. I felt that the hundred-plus yards from the parking lot to my desk at work was the extent of my endurance before the pain really set in. Going to the cafeteria for lunch was equally challenging. I felt like an old man, and this lasted for a couple of months.
I finally went to a sports medicine specialist who did X-rays and had me flex various leg muscles and instantly diagnosed a raging case of tendonitis. He prescribed medication that cleared it up in two days.
As my body became accustomed to running, that never returned. Here I am almost 25 years later and still running as much as always.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, let your body get used to it over time.
I’m a fan of C25K or Couch to 5k(m - 3.1miles). Over a period of 8 or 9 weeks it gets someone from doing nothing but sitting on the couch to running a 5k. It’s a run/walk combo where week one you’re walking 90% & only running for a small bit at a time, the running part gradually increases every week.
There are two variants that are really the same; one is distance-based while the other is time based. Assuming you’re running a 10 minute mile if you run 1/10th of a mile or for one minute you’ve done the exact same distance. They have an app & webiste but you don’t actually need it, all you need is a copy of the training plan & a timing (or GPS) device as basic as a stopwatch which will tell you when you minute (or two minutes, or three minutes, etc.) are up & you should switch to either running/walking from what you were currently doing.
So am I for adults. I coach high schoolers and there’s limited time to bring them up to speed. They are expected to run in the races.
We have them run on the track so we can monitor them. Once they can do 20 minutes non-stop, they’re allowed on the road.
The two edged sword is that teen aged bodies recover faster so can handle the rushed training more but teens (and their coaches) push the limits even more.
The coach (I am confident not you, but I see this) often has little concern about one or two runners getting fairly severe overuse injuries and dropping out for months of PT since pushing hard will also get the four or five whose bodies handle it to their best for competition.
And the kids want to please the coach and are afraid to disappoint their peers. (Across all sports girls are worse in this regard than the boys and it’s part of why we see more sports injuries in girls.)
It is worsened by the increased pressure to focus on the single sport or even single event, often year round.
We do try not to push the kids to their limits. Our biggest concern( and problem) is getting kids through the season without injury. We both think that kids are more fragile and injury prone than when we ran in HS ('76-78 for me, 86-90 for him), we think it’s because kids don’t grow up playing in the street, shooting hoops on the playground and generally being active. Even minimal time on an all weather track results in overuse injuries.
We do emphasize reporting any possible injury (and that we won’t be mad) and that hiding an injury results in more downtime than early intervention.
We do encourage kids(especially in track) to try different events and incorporating cross-training into their routine.
Running coach IS a running coach. I have learned much from him over the years at the Dope. (Among other things, thanks to his advice here, I feel pretty confident in my choice of shoes and how often I replace them.)
Again, I was confident not you. But I see it in my area quite a bit. Maybe a bit less recently. In my early days in my community a local HS coach, revered for bringing many state level wins for his track teams, famously preaching good messages focusing on that “if each of you get to your best none of you may win state but our team will”, was also infamous to me for having hard days alternating with harder days. There was no recovery and every year we local pediatricians dealt with the injured even as the team did great. Our encouraging recovery days was of no power over what coach said. Parents loved him though. He took the scrawny freshmen late bloomers who were rejects from many other sports that rewarded large as “his” and as they sprouted got them developing track focused. His focus on dedication, discipline, and the success of the team over the individual, spilled over into other aspects of the kids’ lives. Lots to like. But damn the overuse injuries we saw.