...resting...

Today has become a 'rest day'. It had to happen as I found the run to circuits yesterday rather hard going and I was generally lacking in energy. I suspect that the cause is basically 2 long swims; Sunday and Tuesday, both longer than I've ever swum before. These followed on from a reasonably long run on Saturday so altogether I'm feeling the strain.

My morning heart rate has become elevated at a fairly consistent 47bpm which is a 15% increase. I've just measured by HRV and at a resting of 51bpm it was 40 which is rather low too. These parameters both support the idea that I'm tired!

It seems to be impossible to do 3x runs, 3x swim, 1x cross training and at least 1x rest day per week.

Looking at HRV

By last Friday day my morning heart rate was raised by nearly 20%, presumably due to the sequence of long run; another run, circuits and a late night (with too much wine). Saturday's run felt tougher than I'd hoped so this morning I was surprised that my waking heart rate had dropped back halfway.

Midmorning I found time to chill for a few minutes and popped on the monitoring strap. I was pleased to see my heart rate was further reduced at its normal rest rate and the standardised HRV was 73 which is pretty average for me.

I doubt that the extra few hours had much of a recovery effect or that breakfast had been beneficial to that extent. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be starting afresh on a week and will be strong enough to do a 10% mileage increase rather than the step-back I'd thought looked inevitable on Friday/Saturday.

Recovery indication with HRV begins

After a few failed opportunities I've managed to do a comparison of pre- and post-run HRV using Lepo as outlined a few posts ago. Of course snapshots aren't enough but from yesterday to today there's been a slight increase in the RMSSD value. This suggests that I'm not systemically stressed after my slow 18km. That's good as a long slow run shouldn't do much harm. As I gather more data hopefully some norms and trends will appear.

HRV experiments on Android

One day I might  buy an Ambit3 or Fenix3 which include HRV assessment and algorithms to suggest recovery time. Currently I can't commit to such devices as they are costly and yet not really good enough. Suunto are very reliant upon the Moveslink software and there's no Android app available currently and its release date has always slipped away. Garmin have a terrible reputation for unreliability presently and although some online reviews of the Fenix3 are great there still seem to be issues around its logging accuracy. For £400 I'd expect better of both.

However I've entered the heart rate recovery bandwagon for a small outlay using:

• Lepo android app
• A cheap ANT dongle from eBay
• an OTG microUSB B to female USB A converter

which got me started (system is Nexus 7 2012 edition on KitKat) for under £10.

I also had to install 3 pieces of Android software:

• ANT+ Plugins Service
• ANT Radio Service
• ANT USB service

These appear to be activated when the dongle is plugged in and this should be done a few moments before starting the Lepo app. I've run this a few times now and now need to try to understand what the RMSSD figures mean. It is worth noting that the actual RMS value is reportedly transformed 20*ln(RMSSD) to make it more user-friendly.

The concept of HRV is reviewed here and my take on it is that both physiological and psychological stress tend to make the heart beat more regular due to activation of the driving sympathetic nervous system and reduction in the background parasympathetic nerves. Short term (i.e. minutes) recording of R-R intervals can be summarised in RMSSD values although it is clear that this is a gross oversimplification of how heart beats fluctuate.

I don't have a clear plan of how to interpret my own RMSSD values except that I now know they vary between 70 and 100.