Tracking recovery with your heart rate

Measuring your heart rate is a great way to track your recovery from a major event such as a marathon or half marathon. You’ll first need to establish a baseline measure of your average resting heart rate. It may fluctuate a little daily so take it at the same time each morning (ideally before you get up out of bed) and establish your average. It’s important to do this before Returning to training after a marathon .

Heart Rate App

There is a great app on iPhone ‘Instant Heart Rate’ with a Free version & a more advanced version for $1.99. You simply turn it on & put your finger over the camera on your phone & the app records the rest.
Measuring first thing in the morning is ideal as you should be well rested, you won’t have gotten up & elevated your heart rate yet and won’t have had any stimulants such as tea or coffee.

An increase in heart rate of 10% or greater is significant. Don’t be alarmed if you have 1 measure outside the trend, but continue to measure and look at the consistent pattern. remeasure or exclude any single hugely varied scores. Other factors such as sleep (lack of), stress and nutrition will affect your heart rate, and recovery so make notes of other factors which might affect your response.

My normal heart rate is about 37-39bpm. In the afternoon after the marathon, when resting, my heart rate was 50, which is elevated (approx. 30%), but not as high as I’d anticipated.

For the week following the marathon it averaged 46bpm, and over the 2^nd week after the marathon it averaged 42bpm. These numbers indicate I was still recovering from the race (which my sore muscles could also verify) but I must admit they were lower heart rate measures then I had expected. After previous marathons I’d also measured my heart rate & had seen averages in the 50’s for the first week post race. I was hoping to present numbers in the high 50’s & show a more obvious gradual reduction, but for a few reasons I’ve been quite lucky in having a quick recovery from this marathon. Despite this I’ll continue to plot my recovery over the coming 2 weeks til I’m confident my recovery is complete and I’ll definitely do it for my other big races this year; the SMH half marathon & Adelaide marathon.

For more tips on Returning to training after a marathon or to get an insight into my Post marathon Recovery after the Tokyo marathon check out our other blogs. For more information and tips to help you with your running goals contact us or email run@outfithealth.com.au