It was going to be 24km regardless of whether I race next weekend or not. If I do, then 24km is the furthest I would run long 7 days out. If I don't race, 24km was going to be sufficient based on my patchy four week block of training. Staying at South Curl Curl this weekend, so headed north to North Narrabeen, turning around back to my place at Pine St, then back to South Curly. I think it was just shy of 1 hour 33 minutes, probably slightly faster than needed to be. Quite a warm morning for this time of year, with a predicted top of 26 degrees today!!!
Started to experiment with heart rate variability as a measure of my readiness to train each morning, as a prophylactic measure to prevent overreaching progressing to overtraining. This involves strapping on a Polar H7 Heart Rate Monitor prior to getting out of bed each morning. I sync it via Bluetooth to an app called HRV Elite, and simply lay there for 2.5 minutes whilst it records a number of stats - the most important of these being the difference in time intervals between each successive heart beat. In essence, the greater the difference, the better. Sounds illogical, but what this suggests is that there is a relative equilibrium between both the sympathetic nervous system (your fight or flight engine) vs. your parasympathetic nervous system (your rest & digest engine). Everyone is different, so comparing my score to someone else's is pretty fruitless. The key is to monitor your HRV over a period of time to determine a baseline to which you can detect significant deviations as markers and warning signs of progressing towards overtraining. So far I have recorded this metric each morning since Thursday with the following numbers - 75, 83, 82, 81. This morning's score was quite good considering I returned to training yesterday, so was anticipating something quite lower. Tomorrow will be interesting!
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