Keep My Mouth Shut/HR Oddities

117 Days

Last Weeks Totals:
Bike: 116.9 miles
Run: 21.8 miles
Swim: 5700 yards (3.24 miles)

Remind me next time that I take an entire week off of work to keep my mouth shut and not tell my coach. Once he found out that Kati and I both had the week off he filled us up in what he called a "full week". The totals that you see above are very close to the end of week totals that we had during peak training for the Half Ironman but with just a little bit more pool time.

There was one interesting development this week though that I never saw coming nor can I explain. My average heart rate has dropped dramatically. During my first two long rides my average heart rate was 151 on the first and 156 on the second. The 151 is at the top end of my zone 2 which is the zone that I want to be in as much as possible so obviously 156 is too high for a long ride. On Thursday I had a moderately long ride of 35 miles and in the end my average HR was 146. This is low but not low enough that I started wondering what was going on but on Saturday I started to think that something was up. Saturday was a 55 mile ride with a 20 minute run following the ride. This was a long ride after a pretty tough week of training already so my legs were fairly fatigued already and not really firing on all cylinders to begin with so when I saw a low HR I wasn't initially too surprised (I tend not to look at my speed during a long ride so I can't attest to a certain speed attributing to anything).

By the end of my ride my average HR was at 140! There were times that it dropped below that and I pushed a little harder at some portions of the ride in order to bring it back up. 140 is insanely low for me considering that my zone 1 or warm up and cool down HR is suppose to range between 111-140. I have no idea what is happening and if any of you have any ideas I am all ears. We'll have to see what happens on this coming Saturday's 55 mile ride.

The other strange development with my HR is how fast it is dropping during rest. I had noticed on Thursday that it was dropping quite a bit when I was at stop lights and on Saturday decided that I would pay particular attention to it. At one stop light that was about 40 miles in I was at the top of a small hill and my HR was at 151 and by the time the light turned green between 1:30-2:00 minutes later my HR was at 108. That's a 43bpm drop in only 2 minutes! I know that this isn't completely unheard of but it is for me.

I understand that the lower your HR and the faster your HR drops after a workout the fitter you are but that is supposed to be something that is gradually gained over time not something that happens over night.

Any takers want to explain this one?