Elevated Heartbeat

The Wife and I went for a walk not to long ago. She really isn't into logging her efforts like me, so usually I have to remind her to hit the start button on Strava. This particular time though I had an extra Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor. I talked her into wearing it, and got it connected to her phone. As we headed out the door, I reminded her to hit the start button.

As we crested the first hill I checked her rate versus mine. Now I have a very low heart rate. When I'm really pushing it running, seeing stars, I'll be near 170. My typical max while cycling on an all out sprint may hit 163. Again, these are really high for me, even after years of training.

So I expected my wife's to be higher than me. She was at 150 beats per minute after our first good hill, I was at 110 and I was hauling my 2 year old son up the hill. I asked her if she felt out of breath, seeing how high her rate rate was compared to mine. Nope I feel fine she says, what!? I thought. As we hit the top of our third hill, she was at 174. She was definitely breathing hard, but again said she didn't feel too bad. That was the max for that hike. On our latest recorded hike, she hit 195 pushing up one of the same hills. We really weren't pushing any harder, so why is her heart rate so high?

Well after that hike the Wife was doing some googling and guess what? She realized she could be pregnant. After a test it was confirmed. This was definitely a new way to find out we were pregnant. Yeah her rate rate was higher than mine, but it was also higher than she typically expected.

Now just to be clear, there can be many reasons for elevated heart rate, some being -lack of sleep, caffeine, higher elevation. The Wife is pregnant with triplets, so her heart rate is really elevated this time. Our last recorded effort she was about 12 weeks along when she hit 195. There always a logical reason for things, but this one definitely caught me by surprise.