Santa brought me a pedometer

Even though my wakeup HR was 54, I had a great run today. Cloudy sky, temperature in the low 40s, a great day!

After 31 years of running, I decided to go high tech. Santa brought me a pedometer, a Sportsline 360. I wanted it because I'm getting ready to run my canal path instead of the city streets, and I wanted an accurate way of measuring distance along the canal. In the past I've estimated canal distances, but I don't think they were very accurate. I used the pedometer for the first time today. My 2.6 mile course in the city streets, as measured with my car odometer, came out 2.67 miles with the pedometer.

A great 2.6 mile run

I had a great 2.6 mile run today! My wakeup HR has been high for the past few days, and I've been taking extra rest days this week. Last week there were two nights when I only had 4-5 hours sleep (I get busy doing web pages and forget to go to bed when I should). Then this week I had one night of 4 hours sleep even though I was in bed for 7 hours (I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep, usually a sign that I'm under significant stress of some kind). These sleepless nights caused my wakeup HR to go up, first to 52 and then to the high 50s. As I measured my HR that morning, I could tell it was going to be very high, so I aborted the measurement. Except for the three nights just mentioned, I've been sleeping pretty good. That good sleep and my extra rest days finally had their effect, and my wakeup HR was 49 this morning.

The temperature was 23F when I left home. The sun was out and there was a faint breeze. It was nice to be out again.

No running today

I'm still tired so I'm taking today off. My wakeup HR was 52.

No running during the past week

I haven't run during the past week because my body is tired from the two nights last week that I didn't get enough sleep. I'll see how I feel in the morning.

I saw a large hawk

My wakeup HR was 49 this morning. I added 11% to bring my run up to 2.6 miles. I felt great and enjoyed the run. The sky was cloudy with a temperature of 37F -- a great running day!

I saw a large hawk on a power wire. It was in the same area as the golden eagle that I saw last spring. I walked close to it before it flew away. Beautiful sight. I also did my usual feeding of grass to the two horses that I pass.

Wow!

Wow! My wakeup HR was 46, a new low since my accident on May 19 and a tie with my pre-accident HR. My wakeup HR when I ran marathons in the early 80s was 44 (later it dropped to 40), so I'm almost at my marathon HR!

I had a good run, although I could tell I'm not quite recovered from my sleep disturbances last week. That's why it was a "good" run and not a "great" run. If I had run on Saturday, I would have had a poor run because I felt tired, and I probably would have had to take today off. By taking the rest day when I felt tired, I gave my body two extra days of good sleep to recover, and today was a nice run. I really believe that you should take a day of rest when you feel tired, and some of the running literature teaches that!

I've found that my wakeup HR is a good indicator of my body condition, but my 30 situps are a better indicator. HR is a "static" indicator (no body movement) while situps are a "dynamic" indicator.

Sleep, what's that? :(

This hasn't been a good week for sleep. During the week I only had 3 hours sleep one night and two days later 5 hours (I got my normal 7 hours the other nights). I felt pretty good during the week, but I'm tired this morning. My wakeup HR was 52 and I'm skipping my run today. I frequently have a couple of days delay between the night I don't get much sleep and the day that my wakeup HR goes up and I feel tired. That happened this week. It took about two or three days after I messed up my sleep for my wakeup HR to move up. It started moving up and the next day it peaked, and the day after that it started back down. The good news is that I got my normal sleep on the other nights during the week. Because of that, my increase in wakeup HR didn't last long. I don't take drugs to help me sleep. Instead I take a homeopathic remedy called Nux Vomica. Nux is not a drug and has no side effects. It is a catalyst that helps my body get started in recovering from the lack of sleep.

Because of this sleep disturbance, I will have run only run once this week. Some runners are hesitant to take an extra day of rest when they feel tired. They are worried their performance will go down. They have a good point since performance does go down when one is inactive. However, my experience has been that it takes about the same time to come back to my previous performance that it took lose that performance. That is, if I take an extra rest-day, my performance will be back up after one or two days of running. So, I don't worry about taking an extra rest day when I need it. I think that ones performance will be hurt more by running when your body is tired.

Increasing my mileage at a higher rate than before my auto accident

My wakeup HR was 49 again. Another beautiful day and a nice run!

This was the second time for running my increased mileage of 2.35 miles, and it went fine. Since I started running after my accident, I've been able to add 10+% every week. Before the accident I only added distance every 2-3 weeks. I think this indicates that my three months without running while I was doing the initial recovery from the accident didn't reduce my body condition as much as I expected.

Training Graphs

An almost perfect running day

Today was another great running day. My wakeup HR was 49, and I felt pretty good. I added 12% to my run for a distance of 2.35 miles. The sky was blue, almost no wind, and a temperature of 34F when I returned.

A great 2.1 miles

My wakeup HR was 50 this morning. I had a nice 2.1 mile run and felt pretty good at the end.