Even after 2 days off from running, I'm still feeling a tad of nerve pain in the area of my '22 proximal ham injury. This is in no way as bad as it was then, and it's just 'a feeling' more than anything being strained or torn, but it's a cause for concern and a damn unfortunate time, 6 days away from the National Masters Indoor Championship 400m race. This is not at all a deal breaker and I will be well enough to race that 400m. But, the 200m is in limbo. I'm not 100%.
I was going to just run hills today but I got to the track and warmed up, felt ok, ran a just 14.3 100m and thought, well maybe I can do a 4x300 tempo as planned since I'll not be running faster than 16 sec 100s. I ran the first at 47.4 without much effort and pulled up after 120m into my second one out of caution.
I then went to the hill and ran a 100m and 200m. Short stride, cautious. It was fine. So, I decided the best and safest course is to cross train on the stair master and rower mostly until nationals. I can get some killer endurance workouts on both machines, safely. Kind of a shame though, this is the time I wanted to be doing speed, maybe a time trial or race.
Hoka trainers on
stretches, drills, bands, 100m
Hoka Rocket X2 on
100m - 14.32
300m - 47.41 / 3min rest / 100m ~ 15
100m hill run
200m hill run - 46
Concept 2 rower - 500m - 1:58 / rest 1 min / 500m - 2:02
It was a decent workout, despite the lack of specificity. I really think I can benefit from some hard cross training and maintain the gains I've worked hard for to get where I am. I feel really light and fast now.
138.8 lbs after workout.
Moving forward, daily cross training on the stairmaster and rower. One more light running hill session on Tues and thats all. Honestly, taking 2 days off from running feels like a week at this point.
Heart Rate Monitor
I got this Coros arm strap heart monitor because I found some readings on my watch monitor a bit suspect. Specifically, I recorded a max HR of 185 during my last tempo set. Didn't seem possible. Well, that seems certainly feasible now that I've measured my HR at 176 after my second sprint on the rower today. I also measured a low of 47 overnight in deep sleep. Quite a range. Max HR of 185 would be considered a normal maximum HR for a trained athlete age 35.
It’s total volume of blood pumped that matters. This is a function of two parameters - heart rate and stroke volume. As a general rule, athletes who have higher heart rates have less stroke volume. Athletes who have lower heart heart rates have greater stroke volume. Female athletes HR run about 5 percent higher than males because their hearts are smaller. The charts and calculations by age are just wrong. It’s really highly variable and just depends on your natural heart size. It’s true that heart rate declines with age and yours has as well. Probably when you were 30 you had a max well over 200, even though the table would say 185 or so. So your heart rate runs high as your stroke volume is on the lower side. Of course heart rate is very useful for tracking training. Just can’t apply or compare your absolute heart rate anyone else’s. Or some arbitrary HR value based on age. If one wanted to do a comparison, it would need to be comparing each persons percent of their own maximum. The badge of honor that athletes have with low heart rates is another misguided subject. A significant portion of that is electrical corruption of the sinus node that controls heart rythyms. Long time old former athletes have a higher rate of pacing (pacemakers) because their resting heart rate is too low. More on that some other time. But basically super low heat rate from training (yours is not, under 40 during sleep is) is not a measure of health. It’s a risk factor.
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