Ghost in the machine

It can be funny how we rely on our technology.

Yesterday I said that I had been struggling to keep the intensity of my runs under control. That has been largely based on observations of my heart rate both during the sessions and after. I have been a bit frustrated how high my average heart rate has been for my runs recently, particularly since I feel my fitness is better than that. My average running heart rate also clashes with what I see on the bike (where I use a different monitor). My heart rate on the bike is starting to return to normal, but I haven't been seeing that during running. I have simply been telling myself that I am not running fit, but have been starting to suspect there was more to it than that.

I wouldn't normally rely on my heart rate so much, instead working off pace. However, since I lost so much fitness due to injury my target paces are all out the window, as a result I thought I would work with heart rate as a metric, until I was fit again. Seemed like a decent idea at the time.

However, during last night's run I had the issue again. My heart rate had travelled up to around 170bpm by the 2km mark, but I just didn't feel like I was running that hard. 170bpm is not foreign territory for me, I know what it feels like and I just didn't feel like that yesterday. I felt like I was running easy, it was just my heart rate that was saying different. In frustration I took my heart rate manually and sure enough I found that there was a difference between what my monitor was telling me and what I was seeing. A significant difference (around 30bpm)

That caused me to pause for a moment. I took the heart rate monitor off, took it apart, put it back together and reconnected and sure enough my heart rate was lower. I set off again and my heart rate stayed low. Much more in line with what I was actually feeling. I finished the run with a lower average heart rate than I have recorded for quite some time, but one that I feel more accurately reflects what I felt.

The whole thing left me scratching my head a bit for the cause. While I was injured I didn't really use my heart rate monitor much so it was sitting around for quite some time, so perhaps the battery drained a bit. The battery may have been on its way out anyway. In my experience heart rate monitors start doing all sorts of strange things when the battery gets low. I am also not sure whether heart rate monitors are vulnerable to outside interference. I am sure a quick Google search could tell me, but even without it I am suspect they are. I have seen unusual heart rate spikes occur in the same location to many times to think it is anything else. That could have been a factor with this too, since I tend to run the same route most sessions. Whatever the cause it hit home to me again the pitfalls that can come with an over reliance on technology in our training. This time around I think my motivation for doing so was well founded, but it reminds me that these gizmos and gadgets are training tools, not the training bible. Our body and what it is telling us should always be the guiding light.

All that happened last night. This morning it was down the pool again for a return to squad swimming. Session back with Swim Smooth had me a bit apprehensive, but after chatting with coach Paul I made sure I placed my self appropriately in the lane and so in the end the session was quite manageable. The intensity was well within my current capabilities and to my surprise so was the distance. My figure of about 10 seconds slower/100 is still feeling right, but swimming is continuing to feel better and better each session. Today's session in one of the slower lanes has given me confidence that it won't be too long until I am back up to the faster lane. One step at a time.

The next step of which will actually be out of town (after a ride in the morning of course). School holiday's start tomorrow and so the family and I are off to Moore River for a few days. They will stay up there all the way to next Wednesday while I will come back to town on Monday for a bit of work, training and pet feeding before heading back up. Now that I am training again I would be lying if I said I wasn't viewing this as a bit of a training camp. Open water swimming, different roads for running, options are endless (or at least a very long list). Should be a lot of fun. The computer will be coming up with me and I should have no trouble maintaining a normal posting schedule, but if I miss one here or there, that is why.