I’ve been tracking my easy run heart rate for three years now, and it’s taken me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Same pace, roughly 7:05 to 7:15 a mile, but my average heart rate has bounced from 137 right up to 147 and back down again. I hadn’t got fitter or unfitter in some straight line, and the video goes through what was actually going on underneath those numbers.

There are four reasons your easy heart rate creeps up, and I go through all of them with my own data as the backdrop: running it too fast, your body fighting something off, general tiredness from life and training piling up, or the number simply being wrong because of the watch, the heat, or the first mile skewing things. I also go back as far as 2019 to show that a lower easy heart rate didn’t actually mean a faster marathon followed, which surprised me when I laid it all out.

I talk through what my zones actually are, built off a lab-tested threshold, and where my easy runs sit within that. But if you haven’t been tested, I’d rather you used the talk test than guessed at zones your watch has made up for you. I also share my rule of thumb for how slow easy should be relative to your marathon pace, which might be slower than you think.

If you want a simple way to keep an eye on your own training, I talk about picking one flat route and checking your average heart rate at the same easy pace once a month. Falling numbers over time tell you one story, rising numbers tell you another, and it’s worth asking why before you just pile on more miles.

Pop your last easy run’s pace and average heart rate in the comments and I’ll tell you honestly whether it was easy enough. Full video’s above, well worth a watch if you’ve ever wondered why your heart rate on an “easy” run doesn’t feel very easy at all.

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