Hi all! This may have been previously addressed before, but I figured I would throw it out there to anyone who might have some sage words of wisdom.

When I started working out with my personal trainer 3 months ago, I *hated* running. When she made me use the treadmill for a fitness test during my first session, I wanted to hack her eyes out with an ice pick. :) However, as I got more in shape, I finally realized the fat loss benefits of running and now I'm trying to run outside several times per week.

You'd think there would be a happy ending -- but not yet! I wear my trusty little Polar heart rate monitor, and usually during my run I will run for two minutes and walk for two minutes (trying to incorporate the same priciples of interval training that I would apply to any other form or cardio). However, when I'm running, my heart rate shoots up into the 190s quite regularly. When I slow down to walk, my heart rate only drops down to about 145 without doing a full cool-down before running again. Even though I'm only 24, this seems very high.

This high heart rate scares the crap out of me for multiple reasons. First, I don't want to drop dead. :) That's the most obvious one. Second, I'm also weight training, and I know that prolonged periods of anaerobic exercise can lead to inhibited muscle growth. Not only am I not training in the "fat loss zone", but I'm *way* the hell out of even the "cardio zone". My heart rate monitor leads me to believe that I'm in the "crack-addicted squirrel zone" (and I don't do crack, and I don't even have a bushy tail!!). And finally, it's my understanding that working out so close to my maximum heart rate makes me much more likely to injure myself, and if I had to stop working out due to injury that would really suck.

Should I really be worried at all? I'm getting one hell of a workout and I'm breaking quite a sweat -- and I haven't passed out yet. In fact, I don't feel faint in the 190 range -- it's not until I break into 200+ that I start to feel a little woozy.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any advice you guys might have for me. I'm really enjoying running, and if someone had told me a year ago I'd be running *at all*, I would have laughed in their face. But now, I find it amazingly fulfilling.

If I don't die, or catabolize all my muscle. ;)

I set my Polar to a specific range and it beeps at me when i go above or below that range. It's 65%-85% of THR for me. I think that's between 125-165 beats for my health level. Once it starts beeping I immediately slow down and when it starts beeping again I speed up. That way you keep your heartrate from shooting up into the 180+ bpm range which I believe is counterproductive to burning fat anyway.

I can nearly run the 5K now without ever breaking the 85% bpm mark. Took 4 months though.

Try and bring your pace down a bit more while running, you dont have to be doing an all out sprint for the 2 minutes that your running to see improvement over time...

I only train sprints like once a week and that only a few times just to keep myself honest in the 300 meter run which is a police requirement.

Generally i train on an eliptical though for cardio because after 9 years of playing goal in Ice Hockey my knees are starting to bite it and i want to preserve them for as long as possible...

Are you wetting the underside of the chest belt before you work out? That helps ensure a proper contact w/ your skin. If I forget, i find my initial readings to be too high/too low.

That thing can be fickle...

My heart rate monitor leads me to believe that I'm in the "crack-addicted squirrel zone"

Hilarious! Ok, you're a beginner to running. That's great! Let's not go so hard to begin with. You need to learn your body and your body needs to learn to adjust to the new demands you're putting on it.

It sounds to me that you are overly ambitious. Good for you. Put the that concentration and determination to good work -- determine that you will stay in a certain zone of heart rate while exercising. That's probably a lot harder than going as fast as you can. Do you think you can do it? I think you can. Seriously, try to learn your body so well that you don't need to look at the HR monitor to know exactly what your HR is. Try to predict it, then look and see if you are right. AFter 10 minutes of blind exercise, I can usually predict within 4 beats/minute now. That will probably take a lot of practice, but it will be worth it. I promise.

Are you wetting the underside of the chest belt before you work out? That helps ensure a proper contact w/ your skin. If I forget, i find my initial readings to be too high/too low.

That thing can be fickle...

Good advice. Need to make sure you're getting an accurate reading.