Last night I decided to run for a bit after work. I felt good and kept a fast pace for quite a while. I also wore a heart rate monitor that goes with my gps watch. Though it’s a neat thing to know my heart rate, it’s really difficult to see when running. The number is so small in the upper right corner, I couldn’t read it with accuracy. At one point I thought it said 198 until I slowed a tad and saw it was 158. Here I go with the math again, hold on: My resting heart rate is 60, and my maximum heart rate 183, so 158 is still only 80% (183-60=123×80%=98.4+60=158) of capacity (you would think it was 183 x .8 = 146, but it’s the new math we’re using). According to heart rate training zones, 80% is on the border of aerobic and anaerobic. There’s a big difference between the two zones. Being aerobic develops the cardiovascular system (like being in aerobics class), your body gets efficient at supplying blood and oxygen to where it is needed, when it’s needed there and removes the waste as efficient. Becoming anaerobic creates the painful feeling of lactic acid buildup (like the first day of aerobics class), your body can’t efficiently get rid of the waste it creates by working too hard. I think my whole run was somewhere teetering between the two.
When I got done around 7:30pm, I still had a lot of energy. I ate, decided to read and finally went to bed. I must have (mustof) been tired because I went out right away. I slept for what seemed like hours, but when I got up, it was only 12:18 am. Great! For the next 5 hours, I had this recurring theme playing over and over in my head and didn’t stop rolling to try to get comfortable. I finally figured out at 3:30 am, that my metabolism wasn’t allowing me to just lay there. I got my heart rate too high before bed and whatever my internal workings were doing, my body couldn’t just shut down and go to sleep. I should have (shouldof) learned that lesson already. If I’m going to exercise at night, I need to keep my heart rate lower so as not to keep myself up all night. A heart rate even lower than 70% (146 without showing the math), will hopefully keep me out of the aerobic zone and comatose all night. Since I haven’t gotten in the habit of wearing the heart rate monitor yet, my night workouts are going to go by feel…. right now, I don’t feel like running in my bed all night.
