A great little routine to start in the new year is to take your morning resting heart rate. Yes, it can be a bit annoying to reach out from under those warm blankets and put the cold plastic monitor to your chest, but the benefits to knowing what that number should be are worth it. A cozier option is to have your partner snuggle up to your chest and count the beats for you!
The end of your off-season or after a rest week, while healthy (no colds or injuries kicking around) is the best time to establish some starting numbers. From there, you can monitor any irregularities and hopefully avoid the pitfalls of over-training or fighting through a training session when your body is trying to fight off a cold.
Typically, an increase of 10% or more from your base value would be a sign that something is not right. For example, if you regularly see a morning heart rate of 45, but you wake up one day with a HR of 50 or more you’ll want to be careful about how you approach your upcoming training day. If you know it’s not stemming from poor recovery from the previous training day or a horrible nights sleep, then perhaps you’ll want to watch for signs of sickness. Quite often when your body is trying to recover from hard training sessions you’ll open yourself up to a depressed immune system – your resting heart can be the first indicator something is not right.
Continue reading Monitor your resting heart rate
As we get close to the new year, it’s the perfect time to start up a training journal of some sort. There are many online FREE training logs that allow you keep track of workouts, and plan ahead for new ones. If you prefer not to get online you could also set something up in a good old spreadsheet.
If you’re diligent about keeping track of your workouts you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how this simple tool not only helps keep your motivation high (by allowing you to set weekly goals, and trying to out-do last month), but it will also allow you to train more effectively in future months and years. The magic really starts to happen once you’ve got a full year’s worth of data.
It’s more than likely that you have a vague recollection of what you did last January, but imagine if you knew exactly what you did – it would be so simple to improve on that program and make the upcoming year even more succesful. This works on a month-to-month basis as well. Keeping track of progressing run volume is one of the best ways to avoid getting injured while pushing yourself to make gains. “Ok, you ran 200km in January, can you get to 220km in February?”
Continue reading Time to get a Training Log
Growing up as a young cyclist, one of the lines we always used jokingly was ‘Shammy time is training time’. Meaning that sitting around in your shammy after your ride was considered training time. Obviously not the case, but funny nonetheless.
This tip has to do with your shammy - relative to your saddle height on race day (not the amount of time you spend sitting around in it). Most of us as triathletes will race in a tri-short with a small shammy that doesn’t soak up a gallon of water from the swim, and doesn’t feel like a diaper during the run. However, we often train in a normal cycling shorts with those nice thick pads that ease the bumps and bruises on our skinny butts. The difference between the two is relatively minor, but, it does make a difference on race day if your legs and back are used to having that extra ~5mm of height.
Continue reading Shammy time is training time
A great little routine to start in the new year is to take your morning resting heart rate. Yes, it can be a bit annoying to reach out from under those warm blankets and put the cold plastic monitor to your chest, but the benefits to knowing what that number should be are worth it. A cozier option is to have your partner snuggle up to your chest and count the beats for you!
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