5/13/2016

A scientific approach for Mt. Whitney hiking (9) ~ Try & Error to define the threshold heart rate for pacing

The main ridge toward to the summit!



Using a heart rate value just below an average during full marathon
   Since it is not easy to find out a threshold to define a good pace for hiking, I did pick some target heart rate value based on my experience from running.  Then I tried a few cases of hiking to see what I felt based on the threshold.
   The first number was 160 bpm as the maximum heart rate during a hiking.   The number is if I can maintain my heart rate below 160 bpm, I can continue running for a few hours.   In the past, I had a couple data for full marathon race.  The average heart rate was even higher than 160 bpm.  Therefore, I thought it was a good number I could try in a hiking.
   I tried this in a hiking to Mt. Whitney in September 2014.   The result is I think 160 bpm is a bit higher for me for the hiking.   Especially, a part between Outpost camp and Trail camp, I need to take a rest often to recover.  It was very easy to over 160 bpm in the section with heavy backpack for camping.

Using average heart rate for a regular training
   Based on the result in 2014, I tried 150 ~155 bpm in 2015.  It is much better than the previous year.   I do not have to stop for resting so often like the previous year.  One problem is that it is very easy to reach 150 bpm in the section between Outpost camp and Trail camp.   In a reality, it might be hard to slow down more, it was something like slow motion and it was hard to continue with the back pack.  One the other hand, the next day, I also set a similar threshold for the summit attempt.  
   However, I did not have to carry all for this.  I only needed to carry minimum for the attempt.  Even if the altitude is higher than the section between Outpost camp and the Trail camp, the heart rate is much lower than the previous day with a similar pace.  As a result, I only stopped in a short time to reach the summit.   Probably a good threshold for me would be around 145 bpm during a hiking in that altitude which is around 4,000m.  With camping stuff, I might need to stop often, like stop-and-go, to maintain the heart rate below 145 bpm.
   Although the walking pace is slow, the resting time is also less.  Therefore overall time would be very similar with faster pace.

Not easy....

Based on the past experiment to limit the maximum heart rate during hiking to Mt. Whitney.  Somehow I can realize there might be a better pace for the hiking.   However it is not really easy to define the threshold heart rate.   People might need to understand their heart rate profile during hiking and exercise.  Then people probably also do "try & error" to find their threshold for the packing.

I will continue to collect more data to find out easier way to find it out.

 


No comments:

Post a Comment