51 days

I think yesterday's run was arguably the most enjoyable run I've had in years. It was 6km in 45 min which is about 7:30min/km which is pretty good for me. Whats more I think I've realised why I'm feeling so strong at the moment. I think my heart has gone into sinus rythm, which I think just means it's beating like a normal heart and that I don't have arythmia. Thats just my supposition but it feels very regular and slow, and responds very well to effort. Here's another heartrate graph from yesterday....
Whats also interesting is that at the last race my heartrate didn't go above 120bpm at all, but yesterday I managed to get it to the high 130's. I think the reason is that I took my meds not an hour earlier when I ran the night race, and I usually take my meds after my night training sessions. Maybe there's a case to decrease my medication dosage aswell. Whats more, if my heart is in sinus rythm and it stays there for a year or so, I'll be able to come off the most dangerous of my medications, warfarin. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to get answers to all these questions when I visit the cardiologist.

52 Days

Yesterday was hills again, and my heartrate monitor was working. The warmup was done between 120bpm and 92bpm, this seemed to work quite well, and as soon as I started to feel my legs complaining, my heartrate got above 120 and I could walk.

We did 6 hills yesterday as you can see in the graph below. I'm pretty sure we did them faster and the overall time, including the warmup and cool down, for the 6km was 49:45 whereas last weeks 5.6km took 50:45.

I've always said that I'd listen to my body and I think I do that pretty well, so yesterday on the last hill, when I decided that I wanted to go a little bit faster there were no complaints from my body. My heartrate didn't go up significantly compared to the other hills but I was able to do the 200m uphill in 1:04 whereas all the other hills were about 1:15. It felt great to go fast, and feel power in my legs... I think this hill training once a week is doing me some good!

Whats also very good is that in the 2 or so minutes it takes to walk back to the bottom of the hill my heartrate dropped normally to about 95bmp every time!

Actually it's only 4 days!

Unless I'm really reckless and decide to go against the doctors orders, the entire result of this blog hinges on the outcome of Thursday's appointment. I'm going to see my cardiologist. I have an idea that my improvements of last year have continued, but I'm not sure. I hope what he will say is that I should do it, but just take it easy and listen to my body. But if theres been any decrease in my ejection fraction since last time then I suspect he will tell me not to do it, in which case I will have a difficult decision to make.

54 days

I tried running using my heart rate as the control for my intervals and it worked pretty successfully. There are a few things that I need to change though. First being that I set the recovery heart rate limit too low at 90bpm. It could have been 92/93bpm instead as it was a challenge to get it to go that low. My running limit could possibly be a little higher as well, but I'll leave it at 120bpm at for now while I "experiment" with this. I think there could be a difference between the response with runs in the morning where I have just taken meds and runs in the afternoon where I haven't.
If you look at the graph you'll see my heart rate jumps quite hectically, it doesn't feel any different and I should perhaps have had the presence of mind to take it manually. I think it's just atrial beats being picked up by my monitor as I exert myself harder, but this happened while walking, not running, up a slight incline. Anyway I stopped at the 2km mark, rested till it dropped to a normal rate and then continued running. It's interesting to note that the curve of the "offset cycle" still follows a recovery pattern.

This was a 4km run completed in 30:40, i did stop the counter for while I was getting my heart rate back to an acceptable rate. I would just hate this to happen in a race when it isn't really necessary for me to rest, but we'll see.

I ran 5km on Saturday morning aswell unfortunately my monitor was misbehaving again so I had to use "normal" intervals again. It took 37 mins to complete.

In the first half on February I've completed 62km of training!

57 days

Last nights Lantern Race was quite fun. With a bit of thunder keeping you awake and some lightening intermittently illuminating the path. It had been threatening to rain and a light drizzle started about half way through which was also very nice. What I didn't like was the the 5km and 10km runners and walkers started together, and there were A LOT of us! So the first 2/3km were choas, with it being impossible to get any rythm.

But as far as the running goes it was alright, I was feeling pretty tired, and maybe I'm doing too much, afterall I did 13km on Saturday, hills on Monday and now a 10km yesterday. I think it calls for less work till next week Monday.

Good news is my heart rate monitor is working happily again, so I have some more data, and it still is of the "more normal" variety. I'm very interested to hear what the cardiologist has to say tomorrow!! Some of it is attached below.
I had a thought about it last night, and that is if it behaves itself like it has been then I can try i different mode of pacing myself. At the moment I just pick a running time and a recovery time, but as you can see if you expand the graph there I have a definite recovery, so if I set myself some heartrate limits I can run until my heartrate exceeds some limit and then walk till it drops below another one. This will mean that when I'm feeling good I can run for longer without worrying about puching too hard.

59 days

Unfortunately I have no more interesting heart rate dat. Seems my monitor's battery was flat, I've had trouble with the strap before, but this time it was definitely the battery. So tomorrow I'll be back at it.

My intention had been to do 6X200m hills yesterday, but in the end, without my Polar to make sure I wasn't damaging myself, we threw in the towel at 5. Which was 1 better than last week and whats more, they were much faster. Last weeks lap times, up and down the hill were, 3:45, 3:40, 3:45 and 3:35 respectively. Yesterdays times were 3:26, 3:26, 3:23 3:41 and 3:45. Ok so the last one was slow but by that stage, I was buggered!!

So today was meant to be a short walk, but I think I'm gonna skip it, cause tomorrow is a 10km night race, should be fun.

I changed my mind

I thought that Friday's heart rate data was pretty uninteresting because it was only a walk, but after looking at it closer it is very interesting, and proves my point about how well my heart is currently responding to output demands. The route was Boys High, which takes us on a gently downhill initially, then we get to the hill I do hill training on, which is 2/300m long. Then the 5km takes you straight back down a similair hill, at the bottome of which we turn around and come back up, down the first hill and back up the gentle slope towards the end of the route.


The amazing thing to me is that that is suddenly all reflected in my HR data (2 steep hills, 2 downhills, below average hr for the gentle down slope, slightly above average hr for the gentle upslope)... which is as it should be... but still, it was only a walk!

60 days!!!

Friday was a leasurely 5km walk in 48mins as I knew I had Saturday ahead of me. Saturday, the long run, was 100min on the road. Ok so it turned out to be 107min on the road and 13km which wasn't too shabby, it was at about 8:10min/km which was in the suggested target zone and if maintained would bring me in just under the 180min mark. So I'm quite happy with that. Unfortunately my polar was giving me trouble so I have no data to show for it.

Today is more hills! Sounds like fun. I can hardly believe that it's so close! I must admit that I still haven't entered the race... and I probably should, but I'm waiting to see what the cardiologist says. I'm encouraged, but also a little concerned by my heart's sudden slow rate. For illustration I've attached some data from October, which is generally what I'm used to seeing.


You can see that what my heart currently does is more like a normal heart should behave, which is encouraging, but it's not what I'm used to and thats worrying. So I'd really like to ask a doctor whats up. Obviously my silly bit of Polar data isn't particularly accurate and the ecg and echo data that I'll get from the doctor will let me know if this means I'm better or worse. But thats in 2 weeks time, for now, I'm gonna train like I'm going.

64 days

Yesterday wasn't as successful as I'd hoped, I set my running/walking intervals quite tough as it was a short 4km run, thinking that I should be able to do well, but it was cold and rainy, and without the proper clothing I'm not a good cold weather person. I ended up feeling pretty light headed and eventually I had a headache, which is typical in cold weather for me.So I completed the first 2km lap in 14:12, which is not shabby at all. The second lap was however a different story taking 17:34 because I walked most of the way. I think I'm also used to resting every second day, and three days in a row just gets to me, but hopefully I'll get used to it.

65 days

Part of the program I mentioned yesterday includes running reps of 800m and if you are running a marathon you use the hours and minutes you are aiming for to determine your minutes and seconds to do an 800m rep. If you are running a half marathon you take your 10km time, multiply it by 4.66 to get your equivalent marathon time and then do the same thing.

If I take my latest 10k time of 78mins then I get a goal 800m time of 6min 04sec this seemed rather long, and besides I'd like to do a bit better than that. So I used the very reasonable time of 70mins for a 10k to calculate my goal 800m time and got to 5:26. Then yesterday, which was meant to be a 20min run/walk, I walked to the school which I know has an 800m circumference and let rip... well kindof. I didn't expect to be able to finish the 800m without stopping, but to my surprise I made it!! Whats more, imagine my surprise when I completed the 800m in 4:17, now I'm under no illusions that I can do a really fast half marathon, but maybe I can do it little faster than I think I can currently. Keep you posted

66 days

I decided to look at a "proper" training program to get some tips about what I should be doing...it's scary! So I've improvised it a little. What was stressed was that hills are very important, especially considering how many hills there are on the 2 Oceans route!

So yesterday was hills, it was supposed to be 20mins of hills but the hill in question was about 2 km away, so 4 X 200m worth of hills was settled on. It took about 12 minutes. I think every Monday will be hills and every Monday I'll do 2 more hills.

Below is my heartrate response from those 4 hills and you can clearly see it rising and falling as I get to the top of the hill and walk back down! You can clearly see the 4 big peaks, it takes me about 1:30 to go up the hill and a similar amount of time to come back down.


Like I've said in previous posts this is usually not the case, hy heartrate usually doesn't respond in this linear fashion, it rather jumps around. I felt pretty good on the hills although I do feel quite tired now, and I was buggered last night, I was fast asleep by 9:30!!

Today I need to do a 20min run/walk, but I'm going to include an 800m test run in that, because the program prescribes 800m runs later on and I'd like to know if I can do one in the calculated time. If you'd like to see the program I am trying to follow... if slightly modified, check out this link

67 days

I did a 10km on Saturday, what was supposed to be an easy, flat run, turned out to be an ok route with more hills than expexted. I was expecting to complete the race in over 80mins as my pace so far this year has been pretty slow. Imagine my surprise when I finish it in 1:18 (78 mins). It was a nice race and something I can definitely work on.

I mentioned in my last post that my heartrate is doing "strange" things at the moment, but actually when I look at it, it is responding pretty well at the moment to changes in intensity. Which I take as a good sign. Where as before I would get it up to about 140 and it would pretty much stay there for the duration of the run, now it seems to vary as I run and walk. If you click on the figure below you can see, both the figure and my heartrate response clearly.

So hopefully when I see the cardiologist later this month and ask him if he thinks this is a good idea...or atleast if it's do-able. He'll tell me yes :)
Talking about things I'd like to ask the cardiologist, I want to know if he thinks I can take supplements like L-Carnitine or Coenzyme Q-10. I know that perhaps the benefits of these supplements have not been fully proven, but if they aren't going to interfere with my medication, I can't see why I shouldn't take them, especially while I'm putting my body through a lot of stress.

For people reading my blog who aren't familiar with me, I have chosen a monumentally bad time to complete this run. I am nearing the end of a Masters degree in Mechatronics Engineering and should be writing up my theses starting April. Considering that I also need to be training really hard in March and April, I'm going to be under major stress at that time. We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.