A relaxed 10k with heart rate being my only concern
Published on HivePostify by @normie.fitness · Wed Sep 02 2026
I've been working on my cardio lately but there has been one little problem in that my mindset was starting to be one of not slowing down or stopping until i get to at least 5km.
This has been negatively affecting my training because I have a rule that i employ in my workouts where it can never become something that I loathe doing. Well, I was starting to loathe the rule of not stopping until 5k and nobody was actually making me do that.
I also didn't like being in zone 4 so often and for now at least, that is where I am going to end up when I run continually in summer here. So I decided to switch things up and focus on a longer run but this time paying close attention to the BPM
Any time that I looked at my watch and my heart rate was in zone 4, I would step it back. The focus was to get to the extent of zone 3 but not surpass it. I don't remember exactly but I think my zone 3 threshold where it crosses into zone 4 is 154 BPM.
I never crossed very far into zone 4 and this was kind of the idea. I actually can run for quite a while in zone 4, really far into it actually. But the problem there is that I get gassed pretty fast and there is a greater chance of me feeling extremely drained afterwards or even sore the next day. So this is more of an experiment than anything else.
I think the major difference here was that during and after the 10k, I didn't ever feel very drained. I also was never huffing and puffing and I don't really understand this about my own body. My heart rate will be very high but I am never struggling for breath. It's like I have enough air, but just not enough blood circulation or something. I rarely struggle for breath when I am exercising in any capacity actually. Maybe I should see a doctor about this some day.
My split times were nothing to write home about but I was never really trying to make them so. One thing I did notice was that I feel as though I can keep moving in zone 3 for a very long time, perhaps just keep going for hours. The issue here is that unless I am walking, I am always going to cross over into zone 4 at some point. I would like to find the pace that I can never exit zone 3 but i don't know if it is just because I am older or because I never focused on cardio until recently, but my upper limit of zone 3 while jogging is closer to walking than it is to running.
Not that I really care what other people think of me, but I kind of feel like I look a bit foolish, like something that is power-walking.
The whole point of this exercise was to make the cardio not suck again because I know that I will not stick with any exercise that I loathe. I am happy to report that other than running out of water again, there really wasn't any particularly good reason for me to stop at 10k. Next up I may try to figure out a method of stashing some water in a bush somewhere and then picking it up later rather than stopping once I run out.
I lost more than 2kg in this 90 minutes due to sweating, so I know that rehydrating is going to be a very important part of me doing any sort of longer-distance running.
Thoughts?
Tags: #fitness#health#exercise#running#strava#jogging