eli5 – what is cardiac drift? Why is it important to know?
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Cardiovascular drift is the name for how your heart rate increases as you continue to exercise at a given level of aerobic exertion, even though you aren’t actually working harder or burning more calories. It’s typically not dangerous, but it’s still bad because it can trick you into thinking you are working harder than you are and hold you back in your training if you use your heart rate as a measure of how hard you are working.
As you maintain a certain level of exertion, your internal temperature increases. The body counters this by sweating and by moving some of the fluids in your blood to the tissues near your skin to help cool you down. This essentially thickens your blood a tiny bit, which means your heart is using the same amount of power to move less blood around. Your heart compensates by beating more often, causing the increased heart rate.
There are three main counters to cardiovascular drift: drink more fluids so your body has enough for both cooling and blood, working out in a cooler environment to minimize the need for cooling measures, and acclimating to that level of exercise. A person running a 6:00 mile pace for the first time will experience more cardiac drift than somebody who has done it regularly for weeks or months.
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