My sleep patterns still haven't recovered from last weekend when I only got 4 hours sleep. I went to bed earlier last night but woke up after 4+ hours and couldn't get back to sleep for quite a while. Even with a loss of sleep last night, my wake up HR was 48. I can tell, though, that my body is tired. Since I ran yesterday, today is a rest day.
I bought a Tanita pulse rate monitor. It's a simple device that does only pulse rate; I put my finger over the sensor. I'm hoping this will save me a bit of time. I've been measuring my pulse rate using the pressure point by my right ear and my watch, measuring it for one minute. I would measure it two or three times to be sure I had a stable reading. The Tanita does it in about seven seconds; I can take several readings in the one minute that I needed for my first reading the "old fashioned" way. The wake up HR number I report in this blog will be the average of several readings. For the first few days, I'll also use my watch as a sanity check on the Tanita.
Before I bought the Tanita, I took about a dozen readings of my pulse in the store. Then, I sat in my car and took about 20 more readings. After I got home, I've taking another dozen readings. The accuracy of the Tanita is about +- 1 (at best; accuracy may be worse).
Ordinarily when I run I'm not concerned about measuring my pulse, because I run at my "comfortable" pace. However, when I start to to do speed work, I will be interested in measuring my pulse so see how much stress I'm putting on my body. Anyway, as a software engineer, I like to play with numbers and draw graphs of them :)
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