Should I monitor myself?

Question
I am 43 years old and decided to start jogging 2 months ago. I  started a beginners program of running and walking. The idea is to get me running for 30 minutes after 15 weeks. Even though I found it tough at first, I started to see an improvement after a month. At this point I decided to try a friends heart monitor to see if I'm running in my aerobic zone. I found that after only 4 minutes of jogging my heart rate was around 175 to 180, but it didn't feel bad. This worried me, so I changed my running program to run within my aerobic zones using the Karvonen method. for me thats 146-156 (70 to 80). Thing is I have been doing this now for weeks running every other day and I have seen no improvement in my ability to run further before I reach 156 beats. I am continually being stopped every 2 minutes for about 30 seconds. What should I do? Should I continue to monitor myself or just run to I feel like I should stop? After 2 months of running I am still only able to run for about 5 minutes before feeling pretty exhausted. Please help thanks.

Answer
I would choose to run as you feel, and no longer go by a heart rate monitor.  The formulas used are really outdated and based on old training practices, and aren't 'up to date' with more real-world fitness programming.  I see this often, where people will go by a heart rate monitor and actually be training slower overall due to a heart rate 'limit' they are suggested to stay under due to those formulas.  I now just suggest the Perceived Rating of Exertion method, or PRE method.  This is based on the simple scale of 1-10, with 10 being your hardest effort, such as an all-out sprint type of feel.  Going at a range of 5-8 for your training efforts should be sufficient.  There are another myriad of reasons I could go into on why the heart rate monitoring is a disastrous way to train overall, due to some findings in a book I purchased a while back that blew the lid off the 'aerobic zone' and how faulty it is.  However, it would probably take a book's worth of emails to explain it all.  Basically, the aerobic zone heart rate method of training is putting a 'governor' on your body's capabilities to actually improve. It doesn't allow you to push the limits to see what your body can do over time.  I suggest using an interval training method for your workout format, you can read more about this type of method with my free guide, The Mini-Max Method, at http://speeddialcoach.com/minimax.pdf

I hope this helps you well,
Rick Karboviak

Also, I have a new article to coincide with my Mini-Max guide, this is found at http://speeddialcoach.com/minimaxtrack.pdf