Why is my heart racing when I’m not even running that hard?

Yesterday morning I went out and ran. Immediately I could tell that something was wrong. I started huffing and puffing and my heart was beating fast. The only problem was that I wasn’t running that fast. Why does this happen? This morning I checked my resting heart rate and it was about 44 beats per minute (bpm). Then I went running and did some hills and my heart rate immediately raced up to 180 bpm, but I wasn’t running that hard I promise!

I called my Exercise Physiology professor, Philip Allsen, and these are the questions he asked me:

1. How much sleep did you get last night? I told him that I had gone to bed around 11pm and I had woken up around 7:30am. He seemed satisfied with that response. About 8.5 hours of sleep with a 20 minute interruption by the baby as I rocked him to sleep.
2. Did you drink any water? I replied, “Not as much as I should have.” Duh! I’m dumb. That’s all I have to say. In yesterday's post I talked about how hydration affects stroke volume which affects heart rate. I thought that because I had done a decent job hydrating yesterday that that had been enough, but I was wrong.
3. Did you have anything to eat? Shamefully I responded that no I had not. He told me that a fall in blood sugar can affect heart rate too. Maybe I should have eaten some of my granola before I went...
   
4. The last thing he mentioned (and not really in the form of a question) was that it could be a result of overtraining. He told me to do the hydration and eating before my workout and see if that didn’t fix it.
   

I now make a firm resolution to do what I know I should have been doing and consume a good amount of fluid and carbohydrate before I exercise. This is definitely something I need in order to be able to run fearless.

If you have favorite things to eat before working out that help you run fearless, in the morning or later in the day, let us know in the comments below.

The learn about how to run, live and be fearless visit my other blog where I put “The Success Principles” to the test at http://watchcalebfly.blogspot.com/