Trouble in Dreamland...
Trouble in Dreamland...
Between running 75K (44 miles) this weekend and the Gibson's Half Marathon Race just last weekend, and fighting off a nagging case of the sniffles, either a cold or acute allergies, I was a little curious last night about what my resting heart rate was like. In fact I didn't want to wait until this morning to check it.
So I strapped on my Polar heart rate monitor to see what my pulse was and record a few minutes to establish a clear base line. Only Cactus Jack was having none of my lying around. He wanted to play catch, even if it was bedtime. Chasing his stuffed toy led to a game of tug of war which led to an epic battle royal among the sofa cushions. Before he was finished the little bastard had cranked me up to 120 BPM! And they say dogs have a short attention span...
I then decided to leave my Polar on record and go to bed and fall asleep while recording my heart rate. In the end, I ultimately ran out of memory or dislodged the heart rate strap and lost my signal, but I did get a long period of recorded heart rate while I was asleep (nearly two and a half hours). And to be completely honest, I was a little shocked by the results. I've worn my heart rate monitor to bed before (hey, I have already previously admitted to being an obsessive compulsive!), and I have seen my heart rate drop as low as 38 BPM, and lately I've been in the low 40s. Last night, however, my heart rate was not falling much below 60 and the lowest it got was 49 BPM.
Time to practise what I preach. One day of recovery is clearly not enough from the work load of the past eight days. Granted, I put in a lot of mileage so soon after going race pace for a half-marathon. I am going to take today off entirely. And if my heart rate is STILL significantly elevated tomorrow, I'll take it easy and do a light run instead of a hell-bent for leather set of intervals. Taper, taper, taper. Recover, recover, recover...
As for my heart rate while sleeping, I wonder what the spikes up to 90 BPM are all about... Hmmmmnnnn. I hope she was cute, because I don't remember a damn thing!
posted by Vince Hemingson at 3:37 PM
4 Comments:
What I want to know is how you gained 20ft of altitude while sleeping...
Your heart rate indicates that you likely have a REM latency of about 70 to 90 minutes.
This is a perfect sleep pattern. Congratulations.
"I hope she was cute" - YOU PIG! I was going to suggest that it was rolling or wrestling with sheets that got your HR up, but on thinking about it, that's pretty unlikely. I hope she was cute, too!
My God, Scooter, you CAN'T be a swine in your dreams! That's the whole POINT of sleeping, for Gawd's Sake!... to sleep, perchance to dream. Good enough for 'Old Will, good enough for me.
You know you're bone tired when you awaken from slumber as a blank slate.
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