Heart Rate Training

I've been running with my Garmin FR60 for about a week now, and I'm loving it!  It came with a heart rate monitor so yesterday I figured I might as well give it a try.  I was shocked to see my heart rate skyrocket when I started running.  My resting heart rate is around 55 bpm, and within 3 minutes of running my heart rate was over 160 bpm.  I ran 4 miles and my average heart rate for the run was 177 bpm and my max heart rate was 197 bpm!  My pace felt comfortable, and I even slowed quite a bit becasue my heart rate was so high; however, I wouldn't have even known if I weren't wearing the monitor.

After this somewhat startling run, I did some research on target heart rate training and found my target heart rate zone to be around 100-160 bpm.  Since I was way out of this range on my last run, I decided to keep my pace as slow as needed today to maintain a sub 160 heart rate.  I had to slow from my usual 8:30-9:00 min/mile pace to an average of 11:42 min/mile pace on a 2.72 mile run.  I felt great after the run...kind of like I just ran a few eleven-and-a-half minute miles.

I plan to give heart rate based training a try since I'm so early in my training for the Dover, DE Monster Mash Marathon in October, and I can't imagine that it's healthy to be pushing my heart rate to 197 bpm.  Hopefully, I'll see a gradual decrease in my pace while maintaining a sub 160 bpm heart rate with continued training.  I certainly don't want to run a marathon at an 11 min/mile pace.  If anyone has any advice or experience with heart rate zone training please post in the comments.

Here is my run data from Garmin Connect:

Happy Running!