Running

9.5 laps of Regents Park is a marathon.

If you hate yourself. And live Central.

Haha, it’s about 9km to VP from Manor Park/Wanstead and then 8 loops and back again.

It’s not actually that bad, as the HM races at the park are 7 loops and a little extra, so this just felt like one of those with the journey tagged on.

Was it someone in here talking about a 5k row, ski and run challenge?

@Tenderloin ^

All 3 in an hour if memory serves
Assume the ski would be the slow part

Yeah I did a 5km run, row and ski aiming for sub-1hr for the three events.

I find the ski hardest still as my power is lacking and size is more of an advantage in that event.

Was it back to back? If so what was your order?

I’ve managed all three sub 20, and definitely have most headroom in the run and it took 3 months of training for the ski while rowing it was done on the first proper go at it… back to back is a huge challenge!

It was back to back but I didn’t include the time of the transitions as I was doing it at my gym - they were essentially a bit of recovery but I wasn’t too worried about that as it was really can I do all three in a row under 1hr.

I did the ski erg first as it’s my weakest. Then the row as I knew I might have to pull some time back and that was probably the place to do it. Run last as strongest event and thought I could squeeze a sub 19 if needed (it was!)

It’s a really good challenge but some of the training is a bit tedious - 8-10kms on the erg can be fairly dry!

Does anyone else measure their HRV?

I’d say I’m a reasonably fit person, don’t really drink and in general eat healthily. Sleep would probably average around 6.5hrs per night. 36yrs old

But my hrv is like 38 - resting heart rate is 57 so not great but still feel like my hrv should be higher…

I take notice of it but it doesn't really help. 33 last night, generally around that, up to 38 sometimes. Only time it does anything else is around a big race, it dropped to 26 for a week or so after a 24 hour race in Sept.

I think the guidance is a bit misleading and suggests it should be higher for generally fit, not overloaded people but I'm never anywhere near that. I think it might be more useful for someone starting up to avoid overload but once you have a decent base and are consistent it doesn't do much, unless you do something big, which obviously you then know you are totally obliterated, and it serves as a good gauge to take note of, so you don't come back too soon!

N of 1 study...

I did religiously for a period but struggled to see any correlation with how I felt/performed after ~4 months of monitoring so gave up paying any attention to it.

My resting hr however has a really strong correlation to my “wellness feeling” alcohol boots it up, as does hard training the day before..

That is very impressive!

I went run first, ski, row when I tried it, and did 19:50, 22:30 and 21:30, i suspect your ordering is possibly more optimal, just need to borrow a rower from my neighbour so I can try them back to back again.

I think I’d pace myself to a 21min ski and make up the time in the others, despite having done a 19:46 a couple of weeks ago as it felt like I might start bleeding out of my eyeballs if I had to go much further at that pace!

Just looked up my splits but it’s was something like:

Ski - 21:35
Row - 19.16
Run - 18:40

I think I also went Row, Ski, Run according to Strava.

My garmin tells me what mine is. On average around 65. RHR of 42.

From what I understand it's not really that valuable as an absolute value but more useful to extent it diverges from the norm.

Mine will reliably drop whenever I have a drink, get sick, or have poor sleep.

The value I find in monitoring it is for it to be a good indicator of being ill, before you actually feel anything wrong. I don't really pay much heed to what the app I use, HRV4Training, says about whether I should rest or not.

What the hell does it mean?

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The Garmin tracks it, so I'm aware of it. I don't read loads into it most days. It takes a nosedive if I've had a drink in the day (I don't drink loads/often so unsurprisingly notice it when I do), and that does tend to correlate with crap sleep and feeling dopey the following day

My RHR tends to hover around 40, and HRV around 90. I do get an hour more sleep than you. But probably most significantly - no kids

Hard to compare vs other people though. Anecdotally plenty of people just as fit/healthy with higher or lower HRVs than me. Likewise different heart rates when exercising.

HRV is individual and more trend data than high score based. If 38 is baseline for you, then lower or higher might indicate fatigue or illness or a beer.

Mine PLUMMETS if I drink any alcohol or am fighting off yet another child illness.

When you say your resting HR is 57, is that as soon as you wake up or just throughout the day? That’s pretty in-range for a healthy someone of that age.

Thanks all. I track all of this with a whoop and my garmin so pretty on top of the numbers etc it's more seeing what people who are fit and my age seem to have as a hrv score triggers me and think I must be doing something wrong.

HR is rolling 30 day average so combination of exercise, sleep and normal day to day

If you can do the ski, row, run thing in an hour.. I think you're fine!

I think the garmin metrics are pretty much bollocks for reasonably fit people. They are aimed IMO at fat bastards getting off the couch.

Hrv is heart rate variability and is a measurement of the variability between the length of time between heart beats (r wave peaks). Normally the longer the gaps between heart beats the more variability can be seen. During sleep this can be a reflection of how your parasympathetic nervous system is working. When this is working well, you're relaxed and your body is recovering.
When you're stressed and your body is working hard i.e. sickness, hard exercise, drinking, you're Parasympathetic nervous system is not able to make your body relax so much. So this is useful as trend data to see how you differ from normal.
Absolute numbers will depend on you as an individual. Hrv depends a lot on you're sleep cycles and how much deep sleep you get as this is when the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant. Major things that will affect this is how late you eat and activity before bed, as well as the rest mentioned.

Mine PLUMMETS if I drink any alcohol

ditto.

how late you eat and activity before bed

Absolute filth. I'm here for it. Forget running.

Finally managed to do a sub 18 today - 17:52.

It’s almost like hill repeats, diet and sleep make you faster…

Let’s see how it is when I’m 6kg heavier after Christmas.

Going back to the HRV thing, the Garmin reddit indicates most users saw a drop in October/November without illness or lifestyle change which indicates Garmin did something with their algorithm. Whoop will have their own one. I use a Polar but they should all be measuring the same thing. Polar only measures it during sleep, too.