Sunday, October 29, 2006

Nice Race - Shame about Number 618

Preamble - Heart Rate Monitors.

For a time, when my hrm and Garmin both broke, I ran without any toys at all, with the idea of being totally open to the unmediated feeling of the run. However I soon moved back to the HRM. Without it I found that the pace of my slow runs edged up and my faster runs edged down. I wasn’t too worried about the faster runs as those don’t feature too much in my programme but running the slower runs faster meant I did not savour them as much. So I went back to regulating them by heart-rate and immediately felt better.

Because I look fairly closely at my heart rate I have a very clear idea of how many beats I take for any given level of exertion. Although I am not over fussed by precise percentages the feedback from the hrm is a good indicator of how things are going. If I am not feeling 100% I have a rule of thumb that says anything up to about 10 beats above the normal rate is OK.

Beachy Head Marathon

I was really looking forward to running this: I know the area well and love the views; I prefer running off- road; running downhill is fun and if the slope is too steep you can always walk up. But it ended up a total failure.

All week I had been struggling with a virus but thought it was just one of those niggling things that happens before a race, so I put it to one side. But as soon as started I knew I was in trouble as my legs felt as if they had no power. Ah well I thought, just be very conservative, run slowly, walk where necessary and don’t worry about how long it takes. Although I did this I became increasingly worried because my heart rate was sky high, 15-20 beats about what it should have been and no matter how much I slowed I could not get it down and I was feeling more tired. After eight mile I felt as if I had run 20 and on a flattish section at slow pace my heart rate was over 180. At that point I knew I could not go on.

I met my wife in Alfriston and abandoned and boy did I feel low. The sensible hat was thinking I had done the right thing and that there was no point in trying to carry on but the emotionally I was thinking it was a failure and that one should not quit.

As I was standing by the car, talking about these feelings, I glanced at my heart rate and was shocked to find that it was still at a level of my normal slow runs; it was barely coming down at all. Things were definitely not right

Postscript - The Event

Despite my personal unhappiness I think this is a great event. I love the mixture of walkers and runners, people running with their dogs or just being out for an adventure. Everyone was very friendly and the scenery is lovely. I think I will have to return.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope you are ok now

Sorry you missed out - b-z was there too somewhere

take care of yourself

x

Anonymous said...

It's very tough to have to pull up, I've had to quit races too and hated myself for it, but if the heart rate was like that, I'm sure you did the right thing. And there's next year, and there's nothing like the feeling of finishing a race you've previously had to bail out of.

b-z said...

I am so sorry mate
but you undoubtedly did the right thing
better to pull out than to make yourself seriously ill
Se you next year
x