Can a beginner stay in HR zone 5 for 30 minutes, or is my default max HR far off?
Hi, so maybe a silly question and a wrong place to ask. I started running in May, before that, I never tried to continuously run for more than 15 minutes, I think. Now the longest I did was 80 minutes with very slow pace, but all my recent runs are below 40 minutes.
I was given a H10 monitor recently, I'm 24, so Polar set my max HR to 196. I tried running my hard, but not totally exhausting pace. The trend was the same across three excercises, my HR rises to 180's and stays there until I stop. For the last run, I stayed in the zone 5 for about 30 minutes, with pretty steady HR around 185. I was definitely breathing very heavily, but I felt no chest pains, feeling like I might pass out or vomit, or other worrying symptoms during the run. Max recorded HR was 191, but as stated, I was not pushing until absolute exhaustion. I sat down afterwards, and after few minutes, I was completely fine.
I started to worry that I've been pushing my heart to unhealthy limits without knowing, but now I've come to think it's not possible for me to run so close to my max HR. Or is it? And are there any methods at estimating my max HR without actually having to reach it? I've seen the field test, but I don't really want to run to absolute exhaustion.