Sometimes you just stop, turn around, and walk home.
And that's what I did today.
Yesterday there were signs of trouble brewing. I ran and ran but could not get the heart rate to go above 140 for very long. By the end I had to push to get the right zone. I ended up with 10.22 miles at a 7:20 pace. I had heard that a low heart rate was a sign of running without enough recovery. Proof positive hit today.
It all started badly. First, I was too tired to set the automatic timer on the coffee maker the night before. Second, I couldn't get out of bed when the alarm went off. Third, I forgot to charge the Garmin and when I turned it on it beeped and said "low battery. Press enter."
Then as I sipped my coffee (that I had to wait for) I watched a track meet Chad linked to. Instead of firing me up, I oddly felt depressed. Then I put my heart rate monitor on and jogged out the door.
Nothing hurt but the legs were tight. I felt like a board. Today was supposed to be 90 minutes w/70 @ 150 HR. I was going to do 20 minutes then run the bulk of the time on the flat airport. But this was not to be. I jogged and jogged but felt tired, slow, and blue. The heart rate didn't break 120. That's right, 120. No oxygen for my legs. Nothing. After 2.5 miles all the air was out of the balloon. I slowed to a crawl and then just stopped. I turned around and walked home.
Tonight, Mike talked about some fatigue issues of his own and posts the Mystery Coach's comments on low heart rates as an indicator of fatigue. I will be sleeping in tomorrow.
Yesterday there were signs of trouble brewing. I ran and ran but could not get the heart rate to go above 140 for very long. By the end I had to push to get the right zone. I ended up with 10.22 miles at a 7:20 pace. I had heard that a low heart rate was a sign of running without enough recovery. Proof positive hit today.
It all started badly. First, I was too tired to set the automatic timer on the coffee maker the night before. Second, I couldn't get out of bed when the alarm went off. Third, I forgot to charge the Garmin and when I turned it on it beeped and said "low battery. Press enter."
Then as I sipped my coffee (that I had to wait for) I watched a track meet Chad linked to. Instead of firing me up, I oddly felt depressed. Then I put my heart rate monitor on and jogged out the door.
Nothing hurt but the legs were tight. I felt like a board. Today was supposed to be 90 minutes w/70 @ 150 HR. I was going to do 20 minutes then run the bulk of the time on the flat airport. But this was not to be. I jogged and jogged but felt tired, slow, and blue. The heart rate didn't break 120. That's right, 120. No oxygen for my legs. Nothing. After 2.5 miles all the air was out of the balloon. I slowed to a crawl and then just stopped. I turned around and walked home.
Tonight, Mike talked about some fatigue issues of his own and posts the Mystery Coach's comments on low heart rates as an indicator of fatigue. I will be sleeping in tomorrow.
posted by Andrew at 8:12 PM
6 Comments:
Slight correction here. Low heart rate is not automatically a sign of overtraining, it CAN be a sign of that.
I had a few runs like that over the last few weeks. I felt like crap, and the heart rate was low. It wasn't overtraining though. It was just plain old fatigue from ramping up the miles.
there are two instances where I will have low heart rate. The first is as you mentioned. The second is where I have not been awake for long enough before running. My body seems to need three hours of up time before I can get my heart rate up. Weird.
Good job, Coach!
Excuse my lack of experience here, but I need to interject...I thought a higher than expected HR was a sign of over-training?!
Anyway, sounds like you made the right call to turn back. Rest and get back at it.
I've had runs like that where the effort of reaching a relatively low target HR was too much trouble and I settled for a lower effort run - never had it as bad as you though where I had to stop. I put it down to fatigue similar to Thomas as I am ramping up the weekly mileage. Although is fatigue not a sign of overtraining - maybe I am piling on the miles too fast.
My vote is for the fatigue illness and I think it's catching. I've had days when no matter what I did there was no speed in the legs and the hr simply refused to kick in. Time for a rest, eh?
tomorrow is two week's from this post; are you rested?
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