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Originally Posted by Sage
Heart rate monitors are great if you're just starting out, but basically cardio is about getting your heart rate up and keeping it up for long periods of time. My fitness guru (who's the greatest teacher on the planet) back in college believed in the talk test- you know you're doing it right when you're exerting yourself hard enough that chatting is an effort, but not so much that you don't want to do it. So you want to be at the point where you can carry on a conversation, but just. I've seen plenty of other litature to back this up.
The main thing is being at a pace that you're comfortable with. Everyone's heart is different and will handle stress differently. If you want to reduce your HR, reduce your pace. Less effort on your part means less effort on your heart's part. Also, since you used to smoke your heart probably isn't as strong someone who never smoked, so it has to work a bit harder.
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All true. I think a monitor is important for everyone.
The talk test is a good one. You can look at your monitor when you get to that point. I'll attach a link to a pretty good chart you might like to use. The second page of the charts explains how to find your own heart rate zones. The talk test is mentioned on there in a round about way.
You can control your heart rate with breathing techniques. That's also another measure like the talk test. If you can breath in through your nose and out your mouth you're OK. If you can breath in and out your nose your probably need to pick up the pace. So go with breathing in/out the nose until you can't do it like that and then switch to in the nose/out the mouth for a majot portion of your run. It's also good to mix in higher intensity intervals probably every 3rd or 4th run. That's where you can only breath in and out your mouth.
It's OK for your heart rate to be higher than a standard age measure. Some people are 20-30 beat over those ranges. I know I was about 20 over when I first started to seriously measure things and try to improve. I got it to 30 over after about a year or so.
Here's the link:
http://www.lifetimefitness.com/modul...ning_chart.pdf
This article might help or confuse!!:
http://www.trifuel.com/triathlon/tri...ate-000574.php
Good luck!