Yesterday was sprint intervals again, and let me just tell you--the novelty has worn off. I like new types of workouts the first few times I do them because they take some concentration and that makes the workout seem to go faster. But after a few times, I get bored and want to move on to something else.
Yesterday I just didn't want to do the sprint interval workout, but I kept lying to myself--to make myself get to the gym at all I told myself that I could just do a regular run, and once I was running I told myself that I only had to do the sprints for just that section of the road and then I could continue with a regular run. But then the other half of my brain would convince the first half that I really needed to do these sprints, with the promise that after another week of doing this workout I could ease off it a bit and focus more on endurance.
But a couple of things happened that were odd. First, when I put on my heart rate monitor in the locker room, my heart rate was well below what it normally is. Usually when I've walked to the gym and moved around getting changed and putting my stuff away, my heart rate will be around 90 - 95 bpm. When I put the HRM on, it registered 69 bpm--that's my normal resting heart rate (what I get when I sit still and breathe calmly for a few minutes). So that was odd. Then during the warmup section of the run (I run a little less than a mile before doing the sprints) I felt good--the usual tightness at the start worked itself out quickly, and then the running felt very smooth. But most of that section is downhill, so that was no big deal. During the sprints, it was still hard going as usual, but I was just as strong on the last sprint as I was on the first, and during the recovery sections I was able to jog a couple of them instead of walking (still walked most). The mile run back to the gym was also a surprise--I ran the whole way and the long hill at the end barely registered with me.
The real shock came when I entered the workout on mapmyrun.com. The route was slightly changed from what I've done in the past because this time BOTH gates to the track at HCC were locked, so I added a section of the run checking out the gates before heading back to the road to finish the run. When I entered the route I found that it was slightly longer than the route I did last week (3.83 miles instead of 3.7), but I did it five minutes faster than I did before--a gain of nearly a full mile per hour in speed (6.2 mph instead of 5.25--my normal tempo pace is 6 mph, but the interval workouts go slower since I'm walking so much of the route).
So I don't know what happened to speed me up like that (or more to the point--lower my heart rate so that I could work harder at the same level of effort). I haven't cut back on caffeine, I've been getting the same amount of sleep, I'm still waking up every Monday in a panic at the thought of everything that needs to be done, and am still eating the same diet. The only difference yesterday was that instead of my usual cheese and crackers and fruit for lunch, I had leftover homemade chicken soup with crackers. And while I'm willing to ascribe near miraculous powers to Dad's chicken soup recipe, I don't think one bowl would do it (well, two--we had it for dinner the night before).
5 comments:
Wow! I love days like that. It's going to be a long while before I get that kind of workout again -- right now every part of me hurts and feels old, and after yesterday's treadmill run annoyed my calf again I've about decided I'll have to give up walking sections on the treadmill entirely (or at least walk them much more slowly) because I could tell that's what did me in.
How consistent have you been with exercise lately? I've found that after a few weeks of being regular about getting to the gym that my resting heart rate is lower and my recovery to resting rate is faster. So I think (oddly enough) you've actually gained fitness. The hard part is keeping it GOING. Good luck!
Nah, I think it was a fluke. I've been really consistent with exercise lately (lots of little running and swimming and biking people on my training log! They're so cute.)--I had a couple of weeks at the end of April where I only got out to run once or twice, but otherwise I've been managing four to six days a week of exercise since the end of March, but if my fitness improved, it did so rapidly--I was struggling to keep up a 6 mph pace on the treadmill on Monday, and my swimming pace on Tuesday was the same as it was today and last week and the week before (I'm very consistently slow in the water). I didn't turn my HRM on until I was in the water today so I don't know what my "walking around" heart rate was today, but my average while working out was also the same (well, two beats lower, but that's within the margin of error) as it has been.
Thinking some more: the 69 bpm for a resting heart rate is pretty good for me, and my average while working out is always high for my age--normally 160 - 165 bpm. It's been like this all my life. Back in high school when we were doing an aerobics unit, I used to lie about my heart rate because it was always higher than anyone else's around me.
My exercise heart rate is always higher than age level indicates, too. I've given up worrying about that and go with perceived level of exertion -- I know I feel good through the 160s but start getting red-faced in the 170s, and 180 is my upper limit for reasonable exercise.
My resting heartrate is high too - but I am a big fat lump. However, Sarah, I used to lie about mine in school because it was higher than everyone else too - and I thought at the time it was becuase I was a big fat lump. In retrospect I realize I was NOT, but my heart rate was high anyway.
OTOH - I have found that I have pretty good mental control over my heart rate. I can usually slow it down a bit on demand. So maybe we are just superhuman and have high heart rates to prove it.
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