Over Reaching

Well, as planned yesterday, I did manage to get out for some exercise this morning. 50 minutes of paddling, give or take a few minutes, very happy to have got out the door.

I have to say though, not entirely sure I was correct in my thinking yesterday that I was at N+1 in my recovery. In hindsight I am not that sure I a day past feeling fine, in fact if my heart rate this morning is anything to go by, I am still quite a few days off 100%.

Fair to say my heart rate was high for the paddle and the level of effort was not. It didn't take much intensity to push my heart rate north of 160bpm, something that would normally take a fairly sustained effort. Once I noticed that the heart rate was so high I dialled everything back, but given I wasn't exactly working hard in the first place, dialling it back didn't give me many places to go, so the last 20 minutes of the paddle were spent idling along at a snails pace.

I think I can safely say that I have lost some fitness over the last two and a half weeks, but there is no way that a loss of fitness would account for the tough work I had this morning, I simply can't have lost that much fitness in that amount of time. Rather the high heart rate I saw this morning is due to the fact that I must still be recovering from last week's cold. The fact that I am still recovering is not that surprising (I was pretty darn sick), but I guess what I hadn't figured was just how much I am still recovering. Based on the paddle this morning I am still a fair way off being fully healthy.

Still, I don't think the exercise this morning will have put me back at all on my recovery and as a result I am not upset that I headed out. The paddle definitely wasn't a lot of fun, but on balance I am glad I went out. I have been hanging out to do some exercise for days now and so it was great to get out and get some done. In fact, weather pending I think I will head out and so some more tomorrow morning.

It will take a while before exercise feels good again. I need to spend some time both recovering and building fitness again. However, in time the fun will return and I would prefer to get on with that process sooner rather than later.