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Resting Heart Rate for Runners

Your resting heart rate is the lowest number your heart beats at when completely still, usually measured on waking. Roughly 60–100 bpm is normal for most adults; consistently-training runners tend to sit at 40–60 bpm. Below: how to measure it, what's good for a runner, and how to use it — from Karvonen zones to spotting a day to back off.

When Do You Measure Your Resting Heart Rate?

You measure your resting heart rate first thing in the morning, before you're up and about — that's when your body is closest to true rest. There are two ways to get the number.

If you've got a heart rate monitor or fitness watch, this is easy. Take a rest day — no running — then wear it overnight. When you wake up, check the lowest heart rate it recorded. That's your resting heart rate.

Keep in mind that some fitness watches display a rolling average rather than your true overnight low. I have a watch like that — I can see on the charts that my actual lowest heart rate is generally a good 5–10 beats lower than what my watch displays as my resting heart rate. So have a good look at what the number on your watch actually means before you draw any conclusions.

No monitor? No problem. Measure your pulse immediately on waking — don't get up, don't check your phone, don't do anything. A ten-second count multiplied by six will get you in the right ballpark, but for a more reliable number, count for 30 seconds and multiply by two, or do a full 60-second count if your pulse feels slow or irregular.

Exercise the night before, or a troublesome night — waking kids or pets, a bad dream, anything that disturbs your sleep — will affect your resting heart rate. Take that into account when you're testing.

What's a Normal or Good Resting Heart Rate for a Runner?

So what counts as good? Here's a rough guide, broken down by training background:


Treat this as a rough band, not a target to chase for its own sake. Individual variation is real. And a very low reading paired with dizziness, unusual fatigue, or fainting is a reason to see a doctor — not a fitness win.

One more thing worth knowing: some medications — beta blockers in particular — lower your resting heart rate directly. That matters if you're using the number in Karvonen's formula, since it'll skew your training zones without reflecting an actual fitness change.

Tracking Your Resting Heart Rate Over Time

So you've done the test once. Will your resting heart rate always be this value, or does it shift over time? Two important guidelines here.

First: the fitter you get, the lower your resting heart rate tends to run. Train consistently, and you'll see it drop. If you use Karvonen's method for calculating your heart rate zones, that means retesting periodically — establish your current resting heart rate and use that in the formula, not an old number from months ago.

Second: tiredness raises it. Alternating hard and easy days gives your body room to recover, and your resting heart rate is one of the clearest signals of whether that recovery has actually happened. Want to know if you're ready for a hard session? Check it. If your body is tired, your resting heart rate will read higher than normal — wait until it's back to its usual level before you load up a hard day again.

A single morning's number isn't that meaningful on its own, though — many of us treat one reading as gospel, and it isn't. The trick is to track it daily for a week or two and establish your own personal baseline. Once you've got that, treat a reading roughly 5–10 bpm above your baseline — not any single elevated number in isolation — as your actionable signal to back off.

A handful of things can knock a single reading off without meaning anything long-term: alcohol the night before, dehydration, heat, and high stress — alongside, as already mentioned, hard exercise or a troublesome night's sleep. None of these are cause for concern on their own. It's the sustained trend above your baseline that's worth acting on.

Using Resting Heart Rate in the Karvonen Method

Karvonen's heart-rate-reserve formula uses your resting heart rate as one of its two core inputs — alongside your max heart rate — so an accurate, current number matters more here than it does for max-HR-only formulas. Head over to the Karvonen Method calculator once you've got your number, and plug it straight in.

Once your resting heart rate is sorted, you're most of the way to setting proper training zones. Next step: find your max heart rate, then run both numbers through the Karvonen Method above or the Zoladz Method to see your zones. For the full picture on getting the most from a monitor day to day, see heart rate monitor training.



So measuring your resting heart rate regularly can give you a wealth of information — not just a single number, but a trend worth listening to. Use it well, and it'll tell you plenty about when to push and when to back off.

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