Well, after so much time off, it was going to be real interesting to see how a longer run was going to go. My goal was to just “get it done.” I really didn’t care about my average minutes per mile or my HR being in the stratosphere. I knew my HR was going to be much higher than I anticipated, so I was not going to stress any more about it. In fact, I told myself that as long as I was comfortable, I wasn’t even going to look. The weather was nice and I felt good the entire time. Right around mile 6, I realized that I wasn’t going to get in 8 miles if I just headed back to my original starting point. I did a quick loop around a neighborhood which sealed the deal. 9:33 pace with a 166 bpm average HR. Again, a slow pace with a higher HR. Oh well! Considering my layoff, I was very happy with this run.
Link to workout:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/46853876
Monday, August 30th
Today was my appointment with a cardiologist. After an initial consultation, he wanted to put me through a stress test. The nurse led me to a torture chamber like room, shaved patches of hair off my chest, hard wired me to a machine, and made me get on a treadmill. They started me walking very slow on a slight incline. Every so often, they would elevate the speed and incline while taking my blood pressure and monitoring my HR. They kept asking if I could go faster and higher. Each time I said yes. Ultimately, however, the doc eventually stopped me and let me recover (even though I could have taken it to the next level!). He said that it looked like my max HR was about 193 and they were looking for it to come back down to 100 within 5 minutes. Well, I got down to about 104 and he said that everything looked absolutely normal. Two more EKG’s also supported his assessment as well. He said that I could continue training as I have and that he would like me to follow up with an echocardiogram at their hospital office. With that, I paid my copay, made my appointment, and went home. After I got home, I looked in the mirror and realized that I looked like Steve Carell in the 40 Year Old Virgin after he had his chest waxed. I wasn’t having any of that, so it all came off. When I showed Kristi, she only shook her head.
The treadmill:
The monitor:
Hooked up 1:
Hooked up 2:
Tuesday, August 31st
Today was a speed ride in the morning and a swim in the afternoon. Since I hired Frank, I’ve started to move away from the “speed swim”, “moderate swim”, and “long swim” designations. He has some speed workouts, some drills, some intense kicking, etc, but they are all about the same in length….roughly 3000 yards. So, it’s tough for me to differentiate them.
The speed ride was my typical interval training in the neighborhood. Sprint up, recover down. I think the last time I did this was on my road bike earlier this month. I got in 7 or 8 good intervals before calling it quits. I averaged 146 bpm with a max of 194!
Not to get off topic, buy why must people walk or run in the BIKE lane and think they have the right of way? Look, I understand running in the bike lane, so long as you are going against traffic and get out of my way. Please don’t make me swerve into traffic or slow down to go around you! I also don’t like to play chicken with you at 20 mph. Note to those walking, please use the sideWALK! That goes for you too, Mr. Dog Walker! There is no need for you, and your pooch, to take up the whole lane and then not budge when I approach you. Here is an e-mail that I sent to James after my ride:
Also, I encountered 14 people in the neighborhood bike lane this AM.
- A running couple that split so I rode between them
- A man walking his dog
- That loser that I argued with. He was walking with his back to me smack dab in the middle of the lane.
- That ladies running group (5) twice. They were running 2 abreast and then 3 abreast. The first 2 made a mild effort to get out of the way, but the outside lady (group of 3) actually had to dodge me at the last second by moving her shoulder....I was ON the white line.
OK, rant over.
Link to workout:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/46982218
Frank’s swim workout was as follows:
Warm up – 400 swim, 6x50 swim (:10 RI), 4x75 kick (with fins and board), 2x100 swim (:15 RI)
3x(3x25 + 2x50 + 3x25) (:15 RI)
5x100 swim (:20 RI)
4x50 cool down
2650 yards and everything felt fine. I did practice following through on my pull more since Frank indicated that I’m pulling my hand out of the water a bit too soon. I noticed that this gave me more power and longer strokes too. Only problem was that I wasn’t used to it, so that combined with my layoff, gave me some sore shoulders!
OK, so today, I really had a revelation about HR rates. Call me a moron or ask me how I DIDN’T know this, but whatever. Maybe my zone 2 isn’t what Garmin says it is? I guess I just took it for granted that it would give me a pretty good estimation of what it was after I entered my max HR and resting HR. It’s entirely possible that my zone 2 is much much higher. While this still doesn’t reveal any answers about my 180+ on low pace running, it is somewhat of a relief to me.
Wednesday, September 1st
Moderate ride in the morning and a run in the afternoon or evening. Since my HR seems to be very high at relatively low paces (8:30 – 9:30), I don’t know how much good it’s going to do me to get out on the track. I mean, I’ll be at 170 for my warm up laps and then boil over on my first “on” lap. I always knew that the on laps were at my limit, but when we are talking mile repeats, I just can’t hold 188 - 190 bpm for very long. I’ve started to develop the mindset that I just need miles under my legs. That being said, I’m probably going to scrap the track (sorry Eric!) and just grind out miles to help condition my endurance.
I only had about 2 hours to get this ride in, so I was hoping for at least 40 miles. James had a bit longer, so he was going to branch off at some point and try for at least 60 I think. I felt real good and things were pretty much normal. The only oddity to report was some goofy HR readings from mile 20-25. I show a HR of 214 or 229 on the graph and a max of 244 on the data! I showed James and he said that he had some elevated readings around the same time. Elevated for him, however was like 165.
Link to workout:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/47126812
I had my second appointment with a cardiologist today and had an echocardiogram done. Essentially, it’s an ultrasound of my heart. Last time I saw something like this, we were looking at Kaitlin before she was born! I noticed that I couldn’t get my resting HR below 65 and the technician actually said that he thought it would be much lower because of my athletic build/background. Uh, thanks. It only took about 20 minutes before I was done.
I still had to get my run in, and made the unfortunate decision to join James on his tempo run through the desert behind our house. Everything started out pretty normal, but when we picked up the pace (to a whopping 7:30) my HR went straight to max and I couldn’t hang on. I slowly backed off the gas and let James gap me. I came back to about a 9:30 pace, but couldn’t get the HR to settle down. As a result, I ended up walking a bit. After a quick recovery, I was back at it, but my HR shot up to 190 and I had to walk again. After a couple of times doing this, I packed it in and walked home. It was probably a couple of different factors working against me that led to this dismal performance. It was 106 degrees, I rode in the morning, and I am coming off of a pretty good lay off. Overall, I was severely disappointed with this run/effort.
Link to workout:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/47261138
Thursday, August 2nd
My echocardiogram results came back clean and the cardiologist said that I have an “athletic” heart. In fact, he said that everything was functioning fine. I talked to him a bit about my elevated HR, my incredibly high HR when running, and some various other items. He said that some people just have higher HR rates and he wasn’t concerned. He did recommend that I take a supplement called CoQ10. He told me a story about how Greg LeMond was having HR issues back in the day and after a myriad of tests, this supplement helped bring it down. It’s now widely used for my exact “situation.”
My swim workout was as follows:
Warm up – 300 swim, 12x25 swim sprint (:10 RI), 6x50 kick with fins and board (:20 RI)
3x(3x50 + 200 + 3x50) (: 15 RI) (1:00 RI between sets)
10x25 swim sprint (:05 RI)
100 cool down
Again, everything went fine. Still practicing that longer follow through and really working the shoulders.
Friday, September 3rd
DAY OFF
Saturday, September 4th
James and I were planning on a 100 mile ride today, so we were rolling at 4:30 AM. Since its dark for another couple of hours, we had to break out the head lights and tail lights. We met up with a couple of other Ironman trainees and nailed an additional 10 miles before meeting up with the rest of the team. We stopped about 3 different times to refill water bottles. Personally, I had 2 bottles of EFS electrolyte drinks, 1 Powerade, 2 Gatorades, and 1 water. All told, I probably had about 144 oz. The best part was during our second stop. While paying for my Gatorade, I saw a Twix bar by the register. I probably had that thing conquered before I was out the door. It was awesome. Combine all of this with 4 Powerbar gels, and it was quite the feast.
Link to workout:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/47999904
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