Heart Rate Zones for Half Marathon & Marathon

Audio Transcript

Coach Hayley: Hey there Runners Connect fans. Welcome to the Runners Connect, Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast.

Hope you guys are having a great day and thanks so much for tuning in. I’m here to answer your running and training questions so you can train smarter, stay healthy, and achieve your goals.

We have a great question from Marcus today.

Marcus: What heart rate zone should we expect during a marathon? What about during a half marathon?

Hayley: That’s a great question, Marcus.

The answer is a little bit complicated, because the heart rate you’ll be able to sustain for the marathon or half-marathon, depends a lot on your individual physiology, as well as how long you take to cover the distance.

For example, an elite runner taking two hours to complete the race, will be able to run it at a much higher percentage of maximum heart rate than someone taking five hours.

Whilst you might be able to run for two hours at close to 85% max heartrate, you won’t for five.

However, it’s likely that your marathon will fall into the aerobic training zone. You’ll probably be towards the higher end of this range.

The aerobic training zone, which you can calculate using the heart rate zone calculator on our site, is where your steady runs and marathon pace runs should be at.

In this zone, the pace I’d suggest, is enough stress that breathing feels comfortably hard. Long runs should be done at the lower end of this range.

For your marathon, you’ll likely be towards the upper level, but you definitely don’t want to exceed this range, especially not in the first 18-20 miles, or you could find yourself fatiguing too soon.

For the half marathon, again this really depends on the runner. Some runners, myself included, can run the whole way at pretty close to their lactic threshold heartrate.

Most runners will find themselves in the zone just below the lactic threshold.

Lactic threshold is the point at which your body can no longer process and get rid of the lactic acid that your muscles are producing, so it starts to accumulate.

If you stay in your lactic threshold zone, you will be running at just below this point.

You definitely don’t want to exceed this zone early on, as you run a high risk of fatiguing too soon.

I’d suggest staying in the lower end of this zone, especially early on, to make sure that the lactic accumulation doesn’t get too much.

You probably find yourself creeping up within the zone throughout the race. I’d definitely not exceed it until that last final push.

Again, it is a little difficult to provide exact heart rate percentages. This varies amongst people.

However, if you have a good idea of what you hit running at marathon pace, and half marathon pace in training, that will give you a good indicator for race day.

One thing to stress is that heart rate varies due to so many factors; stress, sleep, race day nerves, or caffeine.

It’s likely that in the excitement of race day, plus maybe one or two pre-race coffees, you will find yourself hitting a few beats higher than your normal, for the same pace.

With that in mind, I wouldn’t rely just on heart rate. Heart rate is probably best used as a training indicator than to be used as pacing on race day.

On race day, I’d use it in combination with other indicators. Listening to your body, and feeling in control early on, is so important.

It’s also important to practice your race pacing in training, during those race specific workouts. That will give you a good indicator of what you’ll be able to maintain on race day.

You can also use our calculators to calculate your pace for a distance based on your pace for other distances.

That will give you a good idea of what you can sustain on race day, and I’d use these things as well as a heart rate monitor.

One situation where it might be helpful to rely a little more on heart rate, is if your race is really hilly or rough road.

You could then try and keep your heart rate in the zone that you normally do your race-paced practice in training, but you might find the pace is then a little slow, due to the terrain.

Another factor to consider when racing with a heart monitor, is cardiac drift.

This is a natural increase in heart rate you experience with running time, and can be as much as 10-20 beats increase over a 30-minute period.

So later on in the race, I’d definitely forget about the heart rate monitor, and focus on pushing yourself for that strong finish.

That was a really interesting question, and thanks so much for asking.

For those of you listening that want to have your questions answered by one of the Runners Connect coaches, head over to runnersconnect.net/daily and click the record button to send your question over.

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