Comparing exercise details from one day to another. What sudden changed?

[IvanDaThug]

So yesterday I went for a walk all good, gold star. Today I did the same walk but a little bit further to make it a nice round 10k but when I compared the details from one day to another I was more than a little surprised/ disappointed that the details were so different. I’ll take the format Day1/Day2.

Distance          9.42km/10.04km

Time taken      1:24:47/1:28:31

Av Pace           8’6”/8’49”

Av Heart rate  165/120

Cals Burnt       1576/1077

Both days the fit bit knew where I was at all time and didn’t seem to lose track of my heart rate(no flat lines)

On the second day I walked further, longer, faster and yet my heart didn’t seems overly bothered and so the cals burnt was nowhere near the same.

Is this normal for the heart rate to change so much from one day to the next or is the Charge 2 guessing what my heart rate is?

[MarciM · Accepted solution]

I have seen similar variance in my heart rate. There are many factors that can contribute to this, such as how much sleep you got the night before, what you ate, the temperature outside, stress, and your general health (if you have a cold, your might be working harder on the walk/run, thus a higher heart rate). I personally find food & sleep to be HUGE factors in my heart rate when exercising. I do the same walk/run nearly every day and I can see big differences on some days and I when I reflect, I can note that some days I feel better than other. 

I hope that helps.

[WavyDavey]

It's probably one of the factors @MarciM mentioned. I notice my resting heart rate tends to be a good indicator of some of them.

If that's not it, I would suspect the heart rate data from the first walk. 165bpm is pretty high for an average bpm for over nearly 90 minutes. What were the peak heart rates on both of these walks?

[IvanDaThug]

On day 1 it reaches 176, 79 mins peak, 5 mins cardio, 1 min fat burn.

Day 2 it reaches 169, 12 mins peak, 13 mins cardio, 63 mins fat burn.

The first 1k of the walk is mostly up a steep hill. Day 1 my heart rate went up and more or less stayed there. Day 2 went up but then dropped to around 120 and stayed there.

I think MarciM might be onto something with sleep. Average sleep is 6 1/2 hrs but the night before the day 2 walk i managed 9 1/2 hrs.

Last night I slept for 4 hrs, i'll see what happens when I do the same walk today....

....Looks like Its a sleep/food/mood thing. Funny how these things can had such an effect.

Thanks for the help 🙂