So I topped out at 207 last night and could not run more than 20-30 seconds at a time without hitting 173. I did finally get mad enough I stopped a few times to manually take my pulse, but just over 6 seconds, and that is never super exact. I got anywhere from 16-18 beats for that time...multiply by 10 to get your bpm. Counting for a whole minute is worthless because I usually drop 30-40 beats in the minute after I stop, and I'm not talented enough to run normal pace and take my pulse while doing so for a minute. So my little "rough estimate test" is pretty worthless too because the difference between 160 and 180 is huge. It would really only work if the monitor was saying 200 and I counted 12 or so - then the monitor would obviously be off. As much as I hated the holter monitor, I wish I had had one on last night - I'm sure a cardiologist reading that report would have had a field day. I even took the time to "warm-up" last night, with my first mile taking over 14 minutes, switching off walking, fast walking, and slow jogging. It beeped at me the first time 5 steps into my first jog. My walking heart rate was 130-135. Awesome.
I tried to keep my head up, in the pouring rain, as I walked back to my car last night. I told myself I'd start back on the salt and that it would get better soon. I had mistakenly thought I was still having issues through March last year - I thought I did not start showing signs of real improvement until after my diagnoses and the subsequent drowning in salt.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. This morning I went back and compared my nutrition journal from last Spring to my workout log from the same period. Sadly (awesome at the time, but awful to look at now), I had started to get better in February, and most of my runs were comfortably in the 10-11:30 min/mile range with an average heart rate in the upper 150s-low 160s throughout that month. I did not get my diagnosis until early March. That is when I started compression and salt. There was not really a marked improvement when I started the salt and socks - things just slowly improved starting around the beginning of February.
So where does that leave me now? Utterly and completely lost. I will start back with the salt, but have little doubt that will help. Looking back to last time, it seems almost that I got better the deeper I got into training for IMCDA. I took most of November off, had a fairly light January, and started increasing the volume in February...all this after my symptoms started in October. Does that mean it will be four months again before things start to turn around?
Sorry I'm such a Debbie Downer right now, but this honestly makes me really, really sad. It is the most frustrating "injury/condition" I have ever had to deal with and there just aren't that many answers. That being said, I'm running Saturday morning with Kenyan Way as they start up again and telling my heart rate and its little stupid monitor to "deal with it" - I just hope the rest of my body cooperates!
Another sad thing is I thought I had an awesome interval workout on the bike trainer Tuesday night. I did intervals working in a certain heart rate range - it was the beginning in the series of a workouts I have, so fairly "easy" but I rocked it and thought I was awesome for hitting and maintaining the heart rate intervals. Ya, not so much. Looking back, I probably could have sat there and played on my iphone without pedaling and come close to those same heart rate intervals.
I think one thing I learned last time is that rest did not really make me any better. Granted, I don't want to go overboard and reach an overtrained state that anyone can get into, but I do not think sitting on my butt doing nothing is the answer. I'd be willing to do it for a while if that was the answer. So far swimming and biking aren't affected as much, but it isn't like I am going to give up running and just do aquabike races the rest of my life. How awesome. I suck at swimming and suck at biking too much to do them as individal sports, and am not even that great at the two combined. I am, though, mediocre enough at all three that sometimes I can be not that bad at all three combined.
One last fear looming in the back of my head, or actually a reality, is that I need to go faster this year. I'm sure everyone is like "duh, doesn't everyone want to go faster this year?" - but I mean in the sense of distances I am racing. I'm not doing a full ironman. I think being sick last year and recovering and doing low heart rate stuff helped me toooons for the fulls last year, but ask me to run a 5k and I would have died. I want to be able to run a 5k this year. I don't need the long slow endurance as much this year - I need a little of that and a little speed to race at the half and shorter distances. I do not see how I am ever, ever going to be able to add a lick of speedwork if my heart thinks I'm doing speedwork at a 12 minute/mile pace.
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