I haven't slept with the heart rate monitor in a while. With my recent lack of workouts for the last month or so I thought I'd strap it on and see where I was at.
My average heart rate was 45. I was surprised to find that this is about what it was in the middle of the season. On 7/17 it was 45. On 7/16 it was 47. On 7/15 it was 43. The average is affected by me getting up in the middle of the night to pee. And I can't start the monitor at the exact moment I fall asleep so it includes some time when I'm settling into sleep. But it's probably fairly indicative... of what I have no idea.
My minimum heart rate was 36 last night. Just like other nights where I've worn the heart rate monitor I dipped to this low for a while and then popped back up. This was about the low I had on other nights... although on one night I dipped to something like 33.
Overall I was pleasantly surprised that judging by my resting heart rate I haven't lost much fitness. This is only one measure though. I can feel a loss of fitness in my lungs. I've put on a couple pounds. And I'm sure my muscles will be lethargic.
But a break from working out is probably a good thing.
Big difference in tonight's sleeping heart rate. It took about 3 1/2 hours for my heart rate to settle down. And even then it didn't settle nearly as much. I swam my longest swim to date yesterday evening. Once I got to deep sleeping it looks like there were moments when my heart rate went and stayed as low as 35 bpm but those periods weren't as sustained as they were the night before.
I slept with the heart rate monitor last night. Heather feels betrayed. There was a lot of beeping. I did it in our own bed!
I'm a cheating slut.
Wait, I mean I *wore* the heart rate monitor last night *while sleeping*. Just like Lance does on the Tour.
I'm not a cheating slut... I'm a geek.
My average heart rate on the evening was 43 bpm. For most sleeping periods it dropped below 40 bpm and at some points it dropped to 35 bpm. Not sure what Lance's sleeping heart rate is. I know that they've said on OLNTV that his resting heart rate is 32 bpm. In the coming weeks I will hook electrodes to my chest and fool my heart into not beating as much.
On the chart you can see some of the periodicity of sleeping. I was a little distracted by the monitor and kept checking it every few minutes to make sure it was on. Not a very restful sleep. So you see these spikes on the chart. And I got up to take a pee around 2:45AM. Which shot my heart rate through the roof (about 85bpm), relatively speaking.
And then my most restful time occurred just after the pee. In fact, one of my least restful periods was just before the pee... my systems were probably trying to wake me up to go relieve myself.
Heart rate monitors are cool.
Interesting. My goal here is to get some baseline of fitness. I'm majorly concerned about losing fitness now that I can't run (blown quad) for the next X number of weeks. Carmichael, Lance's coach, uses sleeping heart rate as a guage. And I've read about the technique a number of times.
So I'll be sleeping with the heart rate monitor for a while. Looking forward to the results.
I'm not sure what values will be the most important to analyze. I'll have to learn as I go. Average HR seems important but can be biased by trips to the restroom. Minimum HR may be important. The general decline from evening to morning (the slope) may be important. Don't know. More research needed.
Fat Ass 50k/30mi Trail Run
