I told you I was ill

Fortunately I wasn't as ill as Spike Milligan but I was very much out of action for exercise for almost a week. After last week's recorder lesson (maybe there should be a whole blog on that?) I faded and spent much of the weekend and beginning of this week under a blanket. I postponed Monday's circuit class until yesterday.

Swimming was also out of the question until Wednesday and I took it easy then. The common cold is a trivial illness but feels far worse than it deserves to. I'm still not 100% well but have managed some activity without falling back into bed. I've noticed that my resting heart rate (RHR) mapped my underlying lethargy remarkably well.

RHR from my Garmin's optical wrist sensor 

It's 'well known' that RHR increases by up to 10bpm in mild infections although serious evidence to support this isn't easily found. I spotted that my RHR dipped below its average on recovery and I suspect that this might be due to reduced physiological stress in the absence of medium length runs, aka sitting around at home!

I'm not going to make this into a larger analysis, but if you are thinking of doing that, this report is a great example of the "quantified self" movement (which may well be beyond its apogee).

Incidentally, I submitted heart rate data to my GP this week and the RHR of 40bpm caused some concern as it's a threshold of severe bradycardia. I'm booked in for an ECG next week, no significant NHS waiting list there! Personally I don't believe I've a sinus problem or heart block as my heart rate adapts rapidly and predictably to exertion and rest just as it should do. 

September 2016 Week 8 Session 3

This weekend I've swum, run and swum and found the two disciplines excessively hard work. I think that the stress of work hasn't been helpful especially as it's meant that I've missed swims and condensed efforts together. I have noted that my morning heart has been raised for weeks - 10% on Saturday morning and that isn't a good sign!

Even slower...

I thought  that last Saturday's run was slow, but today I was even slower! I mentally constructed a 25km loop, setting off through Endcliffe Park. After Rustling's Road I met one of the Saturday morning group who was moving quite slowly. I stayed with him and chatted until the Norfolk Arms, content to have a companion and an excuse to take a sensible pace.

Just above the pub I found a unofficial path leading into Lady Canning Plantation that joined the bridleway up to Oxstones.

I suspect that this route is used by bike riders and preceded the development of the Blue Route.  In any event it served well to keep me off the road. After Oxstones I continued along Houndkirk Road and then turned for home over Totley Moor. This was easy going until the steep descent on the Byway.

Just before the 20km point my right ankle/calf started to cramp and this was irritating on even gentle ascents. I tired to massage it but it wasn't effective and with a general feeling of fatigue I had a slow last few km home.

 I'm not sure why I'd found the run so hard and excessively slow. Perhaps I was generally fatigued as I'd woken with a 5% increase in my heart rate or perhaps the sore calf was affecting my gait?

August 2015 Week 2 Session 2

Today's set was a sequence of 100m, 200m, 300m, 400m and 500m wrapped in a few technique lengths. I thought I was going along fine but the final figures show that I was going almost 20% slower than last week. This set is supposed to be relaxed and aiming for rhythm rather than  speed but the underlying concept must be to find a nice efficient way of making progress.

My morning resting heart rate has been dropping since Sunday but it is still elevated so clearly still a background of fatigue. At least I've been and done it.

Tired

After an all day training session I went for an unstructured swim with no extra kit. I'd intended to do 300m sets but due to forgotten counts, changes of pace in the lane and possibly weak push-offs the watch mis-recorded in 5 of 6 sets. I also aimed for a 400m set but that suffered the same fate.

The best outcome was 400m in 11:08 which is still slower than Julian's time trial.

Altogether the swim felt like hard work. Perhaps not so surprising as I woke with a resting heart rate of 48bpm indicating that there is some background of fatigue.  At least I've done it and got just over a mile in the bag. I knew it was time to stop as my rather negligible style was disappearing.

Carry on Swimming

My resting heart rate was nearly back to normal this morning after being raised by around 20% for the first half of the week. I'm assuming that the strain came from the sequence of Saturday run, Monday swim, Tuesday run and Wednesday run and circuits. At least a clear day made a major impact on reseting it.

After finishing a little early at work I went for a swim with the goal being to do sets of two lengths. That worked fairly well although I took longish rests between them. After 10 or so sets I put my mind to doing a set of 3 lengths and actually did a block of 5 or 6; it's not all that clear from my data. A key result though was managing the final 3 lengths in just under 3 minutes. My goal is to improve my technique and fitness to achieve 1km in a 30 minutes total so this is a step in the right direction.