In a coma?

One thing I haven’t done consistently since I started running is take my resting heart rate every morning, something so basic and so easy has thus far alluded me in my generally dazed early morning state. My new running watch has a nifty feature that tracks and trends variations over time. According to the manual it is -

a modification of a traditional orthostatic overtraining test. This feature is based on heart rate and heart rate variability measurements taken during an orthostatic test (standing up from relaxed resting). OwnOptimizer helps you to optimize your training load during a training program so that you experience an increase in performance and do not undertrain or overtrain in the long run. Polar OwnOptimizer is based on regular long-term measurements of five heart rate parameters. Two of these five values are calculated at rest, one while standing up, and two while standing

The test will then give you one of 9 results, the explanations are pretty detailed so I won’t go into them here, Andrew has one of these watches too, he knows what I mean.

Anyway, I spent about 2 weeks doing the test every 2 days to get a baseline and now I try to retest myself every second day, though sometimes it blows out to every 3 days. I was surprised to see a relatively low resting heart rate that tends to sit between 47 and 50 BPM, so far so good, it hasn’t jumped up dramatically in the last month so I must be well and not over training (no danger there at the moment). So this morning I was stunned to see a resting heart rate reading of 44 BPM, seems that I am not that stressed over Xmas after all, this was also after a last minute dash to the kerb with the bins that I had forgot to put out last night

I was back at work today and not a heck of a lot was happening around the office so I slipped out at 11am for a 8Km run. I ran an easy 2Km from the office up to the Tan, once there I did a 500 on 500 off session for one lap. I was aiming for 5Km pace for the on’s and while I didn’t bother taking splits I reckon I was pretty consistent. I finished with 250 off and then an extra 250 on to round out the session before heading back to the office.

Distance - 8Km
Time - 40:54
Avg Pace - 5:07
Avg HR - 82%
Avg Cadence - 182

I had a massage tonight, not as ouchie today because it had only been 2 weeks since the last one. My hips have been a bit tight so I need to be more diligent with my stretching.

After a 6 day week last week I am now thinking I will stick to 5 days again this week and take another rest day tomorrow. I have done 9km, 13km and 8km so far this week and if I run out the rest of the week I will go over 60km which is too big a jump, it would see me going from 45km, 53km to 60+km in the last 3 weeks and I don’t want to push my luck. As it stands I can comfortably finish this week with 55Km on 5 days, I would rather stick to 5 this week and then do 6 again next week.

Gratuitous Sean Bean picture of the day, oh, mean topless Sean, noice

Tomorrow night I have decided I want to see The Darjeeling Ltd, I hope it’s good, I don’t go to the movies that often.