All Heart

Bit of an update on the training for the last month and a bit.  Very very positive to be honest.  I have combined gym and cycling doing two gym sessions a week and six days of cycling.  Some of the six days are commuting miles but every little helps.  It did my spirit good doing a wattbike session with Mark O’Reilly shame he has to go back to the Army!  I completed a 20 minute power test with Mercury Training (http://www.mercuryperformancecoaching.com/ ) on Saturday.  It was the first one I had done so didn’t judge the first part amazingly well I think there was a little left in the tank at the end of the test.  There was certainly a few heart beats left to go to maximum.  This brings me nicely on to the blog title.  There are two reasons for the title.  One is the psychological aspect of my training and the other is the recovery element.

Mercury have asked me to monitor my resting heart rate (HR) in the morning before I get out of bed.  It did take a bit of remembering and getting used to but I am not in the habit of providing the data to them along with a morning weight.  My resting HR did surprise me somewhat the average of the week was 52 beats per minute.  I was very pleased with this as it shows a good level of fitness.  Mercury are monitoring to make sure that I am not overtraining.  I had a rough nights sleep mid week getting four hours due to my little lady not been well and my resting heart rate reflected that in the morning moving to 63 beats per minute.

This leads me into the psychology of the HR monitoring.  The days where I awoke with the lower more average HR readings I felt great on the bike and the commute was very easy and uneventful.  I could push and wasn’t tired when I arrived at work and home.  The day the HR was elevated I am not sure if it was physical or psychological but the commute was a massive effort and I felt tired at the end of the last commute home.  The speed dropped and the avg HR was higher for the commute home.  I think it will be a little bit of both.  Moving on from that the power test on Saturday morning allowed me an opportunity to zone in and push myself.  I could see the HR on the monitor and even though I felt tired I knew that there was more to give.  Trying to hit a sweet spot was good of between 169 – 177 bpm and I knew if I went over this small zone I would be ‘in the red’.  This allowed me to make sure the effort was pretty consistent and provided good readings.

The gym sessions have been providing a real sense of moving forward with the training.  I am doing two per week and the are consisting of upper body toning, core work and a long period of flexibility work.  The session is lasting about 50 minutes which I am happy with at the moment.  I am going to try and fit another session in before or after work.  I am also looking to start getting some more miles in on the bike.  The last two Sundays have seen a longer ride due to the nice, but cold, weather.

Thanks very much for reading!