Smart Hiking (8) ~ Strength of activity for hiking

Example of heart rate trend

(Whitney Portal ~ Trail Camp in 2015) 

Impact of elevation

The above chart is an example of heart rate trend in higher elevation.   As you can see, the heart rate except resting above 9,000 feet (3,000 m) is more than 150 bpm.  This is a sort of high side.  Here is another data as a reference.

 Heart Rate during long run

This is a data when I ran for 3 hours.  The pace is not very fast, but the average heart rate is somewhere around 150 bpm.  To compare those two activity is not really easy.  During hiking, I had a backpack with all camping gears, however, the walking pace was really slow.  The strength is probably higher than the long run.   The heart rate is close to 160 bpm in some part.

What I try to say here is the impact of elevation, or lower oxygen environment, is probably much higher than people think.  The key is we need to understand this impact of elevation and manage the heart rate (pace) is really helping for better experience during hiking.

Also, the running example shows that I can run longer if I can maintain the heart rate somewhere around 150 bpm.

(To be continue)