Hi All

I just got a shiny new Garmin Forerunner 305 and went out with it for the first time last night. As I had already been to the gym earlier in the day, I decided to just walk a regular run route.

However, I was no more than a couple of munites into my run when the heart rate alarm started telling me I had gone over the Zone 2 ceiling. When I got home, most of the time I had been in Zone 3.

Does this mean that I am really unfit? How could I be in Zone 3 if I was only walking and wasn't even out of breath?

Have you put in your resting and max heartrates? How fast in beats per minute are zones 2 & 3?

I put in the max HR and the 305 works out the zones automatically. Based on Max HR being 220 minus my age, zone 2 is 111bpm-131bpm and zone 3 is 131bpm-148bpm. My heart rate averaged 134bpm over the 2.77 mile route.

130-140 bpm isn't really that fast; I would not worry about readings like that on a walk for me personally, bearing in mind that even a gentle run will likely be closer to 160+

You might want to find out your real max heart rate, I hear a "good" method is to sprint up and down a steep hill until you are exhausted, and see what it gets up to. It could be that your heart naturally beats a bit faster than the average

Congrats on getting a 305, I'm jealous

Thanks for the advice Katten. I'll have a go at the hill sprints and see if I get any different results.

I tried running hill repeats and didn't manage my max HR... bleep test saw me hit 197bpm which perfectly matches 220 - age.