The Running Thread - 2026

[GollyGadget]

Congrats on the PR!! Feel proud!!

I’m curious on the HR chart you shared, 50% in zone 5.. is it something that you (or anyone in this thread) usually see in your races?

I just started 3 yrs ago, with no previous fitness experience or exercise before, then I try to stay in zone 2-3, maybe a bit in zone 4 but when I see HR going to upper zone 4, I just take a step back to walk longer… In my head this helps me to keep energy available to finish… but at the same time I wish to have better finish times… am I holding back too much?

Thanks

First and foremost, the HR zones depend on you setting them up correctly. If you haven’t customized your zones, they aren’t going to be very useful. Even with the customization, I would only rely on them as a loose guideline. I personally prefer %hrr but there are other methods.

As for your question, yes, you are holding yourself back on race day. For easy training runs, your method is perfectly fine. If you do any speedwork, you should see your hr in the upper zones.

I just looked at a few recent races and the only one where I had considerable time below zone 5 was the wdw marathon.

1. Most recent half marathon


2. Half marathon PR - much better weather & training


3. WDW Marathon


4. 10K PR


All that said, some folks don’t like pushing their pace and are happy keeping it chill. That’s perfectly valid way to run your races if that’s what you prefer.

 

[Zutroy]

I’m curious on the HR chart you shared, 50% in zone 5.. is it something that you (or anyone in this thread) usually see in your races?

I just started 3 yrs ago, with no previous fitness experience or exercise before, then I try to stay in zone 2-3, maybe a bit in zone 4 but when I see HR going to upper zone 4, I just take a step back to walk longer… In my head this helps me to keep energy available to finish… but at the same time I wish to have better finish times… am I holding back too much?

Thanks

Most of my races I’m in zone 4 or 5. Looking at my past marathon stats, I averaged an HR of 165 bpm. I spent 2:33:47 in zone 5, 35:17 in zone 4, and 1:40 in zone 3. This is fairly typical for a race pace. I absolutely ignore whatever zone I’m in and focus instead on my perceived rate of exertion to guide my effort. To race at this level you have to train at this level, so make sure you have threshold runs in your training plan.

 

[Fenway1970]

Congrats on the PR!! Feel proud!!

I’m curious on the HR chart you shared, 50% in zone 5.. is it something that you (or anyone in this thread) usually see in your races?

I just started 3 yrs ago, with no previous fitness experience or exercise before, then I try to stay in zone 2-3, maybe a bit in zone 4 but when I see HR going to upper zone 4, I just take a step back to walk longer… In my head this helps me to keep energy available to finish… but at the same time I wish to have better finish times… am I holding back too much?

Thanks

So, I've wrestled with the whole HR and "Zone 2" training concept for a while myself. Staying in what the app thinks is Zone 2 for me basically means I can't run at all. Even an easy jog puts me in Zone 3. I asked a friend who's a much better runner than I about it and what she told me was this, which she said came from her running coach:

If you haven't gone out and physically determined your max HR by running hard while wearing a chest strap monitor, then the default numbers on most apps aren't really all that reliable. One, watches are not accurate enough, and two, most apps use the 220 minus age formula or some variation of it which is only an estimate. So, you're already dealing with at least two sources of error. Throw in the natural variability of HR based on weather, elevation, fatigue, etc. and the number your watch is reporting becomes even more unreliable.

She says for most amateur runners (a group in which she includes herself) it's fine just to base it on perceived effort and that "conversational pace" should be just that. If you can hold a conversation while running without panting or gasping for breath, then that's your "Zone 2" regardless of what the watch is telling you. That pace will of course vary from day to day based on conditions, just like your actual HR will.

When I'm running alone on an easy run, I will test that by reading street signs aloud or singing Happy Birthday or saying the alphabet, and if that feels easy enough I don't worry too much about the watch telling me I'm in Zone 4. Allowing for weird looks from the neighbors at the crazy jogger talking to himself, it works pretty well.

 

[RuntheMouse]

A quick race report:

I raced a 10-miler yesterday with the intention of running for effort because often I do longer runs to “PR in fun.” The last few times I have tried to race a half marathon, I have had a panic attack around mile 9 because I get in my head. No panic attacks yesterday which was good!

I let go of some expectations before even crossing the start line because of the weather. It was in the upper 60s at the start with 80% humidity and wind and 77 when I crossed the finish line. So much for my hopes for a cool spring race! I am pretty bad in humidity/wind so the conditions weren’t in my favor. I did a Peloton meditation earlier in the week which had the mantra “let’s see what happens” so I decided to adopt that for the race.

I started off strong in the first half. I did 90 second run, 30 second walk intervals. My first mile was a little fast but I was getting out of the crowd and it started with a downhill. I got hot very quickly, and by the time I reached the turnaround I felt like I was struggling and changed my intervals to 60:30. There was a small amount of elevation during the run in short bursts (344 feet total), and I had to walk a lot of the inclines. I was disappointed that I was struggling but still finished.

For nutrition I ate a Maurten solid in the car, drank pre-workout and ate half a bag of gushers 15 min before, and then during the race had 2 scoops of Tailwind in my 18 oz bottle and tried to eat 1-2 noogs every other mile. I usually eat them every mile but it was hard for me to eat in the heat. I also ate a couple of Salt Stick chews. They had a few water stops and I had a cup of water at each (wish there were more stops tbh).

My finish time was 2:04:06 which was slower than expected but still a 15-minute PR (2:19:11 waaay back in 2015). So that’s something to be proud of! I wish the weather had been cooler so I could really see what I can do but I raced what was given to me.

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Congratulations on your PR! I too am sensitive to the heat so I give you extra props for the conditions!

 

[sandam1]

Just a heads up to people who use some "less known" nutrition, hydration and other running products that are not made in the U.S. - you might want to consider stocking up. I recently found out that one of my favorite products - Xact Nutrition - is not longer going to be available in the U.S. due to duty tax issues. Thankfully, I live about 15 minutes from the Canadian border and can periodically make the 30 minute drive to the nearest Canadian running store that carries it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see other products become unavailable. These are such niche products with such a small audience that I can see a lot of small companies just decide that selling to the U.S. either isn't worth the associated costs or have the cost of these products go up exponentially.

(Please let's NOT turn this into a political conversation. I just wanted to share my experience.)

 

[The Expert]

I did a Peloton meditation earlier in the week which had the mantra “let’s see what happens” so I decided to adopt that for the race.

I love this. And congrats on your PR!

This was a 10-miler but your stats shot shows 9.93 miles. Was the course off? Or did you just forget to start your watch or something?

 

[PrincessV]

I love a good HR convo! Mostly because living in FL, it’s really, really hard to extract much from running HRs, so it’s fun and interesting to hear from people running in more normal weather locations. My HR is impacted SO much by not just heat, but specifically the sun: I can see (and feel) it spike in real time between shaded and sunny stretches of a run, when neither my pace nor the air temp has changed a bit. It feels like less effort doing sprints on the treadmill in 68º (and HR verifies it IS less effort in that regard - it’s hard to even get it up to 140) than slow run/walk intervals in 90º and full sun (where HR bumps quickly over 140 and doesn’t want to come back down). Doing anything with that data and adjusting for weather would require more math than I’m willing to expend, so I actually don’t think about HR at all while running: I just go by perceived effort… but I like being able to see HR when I’m feeling particularly rough at a slow pace in the heat, because I need that visual to remind myself there’s nothing wrong with me: “it’s just the heat, stupid.”

On HR zones, I can attest to how very wrong the 220-age approach can be. That calculation puts my supposed max MUCH lower than it actually is. I can hit that number just picking up the pace, nowhere near an actual max. I haven’t done an intentional test in a while, but got chased by a loose dog last year and if that wasn’t my full max, it was close enough to use as a basis to verify that the zones I edited are close enough to reality.

 

[lookingforsunshine]

This was a 10-miler but your stats shot shows 9.93 miles. Was the course off? Or did you just forget to start your watch or something?

The course was off sadly. I noticed most of the mile markers were off by like .1 from what my watch said and I guess it was about .05 short at the end (Christy hit 9.95 so her watch rounded it up to 10 miles).

 

[Naomeri]

Congrats on the PR!! Feel proud!!

I’m curious on the HR chart you shared, 50% in zone 5.. is it something that you (or anyone in this thread) usually see in your races?

I just started 3 yrs ago, with no previous fitness experience or exercise before, then I try to stay in zone 2-3, maybe a bit in zone 4 but when I see HR going to upper zone 4, I just take a step back to walk longer… In my head this helps me to keep energy available to finish… but at the same time I wish to have better finish times… am I holding back too much?

Thanks

I can't speak for anyone else, but my heart rate is often focused more in the upper zones, even on training runs. My heart and lungs would prefer that I not be a runner, but the rest of my body does better when I do run, so I've on formed my heart and lungs that they can just shut up and deal with it