A raised heart rate in the morning, normally up by six beats per minute or so, indicates that you’ve got a virus. Exercising hard in such circumstances isn’t advisable.

Today’s cold virus gave me no such warning. That might be because I skipped a meal on Sunday and was outdoors a lot.  I was helping with my son’s seventh birthday party: an ambitious tobogganing event at a dry ski slope, with 20 very excited little friends.  Lunch was laid on for the kids, but my wife and I somehow forgot about ours, so we didn’t sit down to eat till 4pm in the afternoon.  That was on top of my scheduled long run too.  Some nutritionists  say that the immune system starts to become compromised if the body is not fed every four hours. 

Guess this was over-egging it just a bit. I’d forgotten how much impact the long run can have; you really feel the body going through the recovery process. They say vigorous high-impact exercise draws white blood cells to the areas in need of repair: that is, away from the upper respiratory tract, so leaving it vulnerable to infection.  And heaven knows if anyone has bothered to measure what stress a child’s birthday party exerts on the parental immune system.  By the time I’d driven half a dozen guests home, and gone back to retrieve various lost coats and bags, I definitely felt a bit older.

Anyway, I hope this cold does not last long, because the marathon training programme is only just on target, and I really want to run better and faster than in 2005. There is a lot of ground to make up in three months with only a little margin for the occasional setback.

At this stage I don’t think it’s flu, although I have some muscle ache, which I attributed to the long run. I’m certainly not inclined to exercise, even lightly…

Resting heart rate 51

Weight 72 kg

Mood

It’s the stupidest thing, but this foot pain is worrying. The tendon was damaged in my hallux a few months ago while fooling around doing pull-ups with my 7-year-old. I say hallux, because if I say “big toe”, you’re unlikely to think this is very serious. But the soreness is spreading out across my foot 20-30 minutes into each run.

I’m not so much worried about the pain increasing, but the danger of a longer-term compensating injury occurring somewhere else as my running gait becomes unbalanced. I’ve experienced something of this before. My physio, Ian Andrews, suggested this was possibly the underlying cause of my injury in 2005, prior to my first attempt at the Flora London Marathon. It’s very common among amateur athletes. Incidentally, it’s a really good idea to have a physio check out your running gait occasionally, and also examine your core stability (more on that in a later post.)

I’m told by reliable sources that tendon injuries don’t repair readily because blood flow is limited to these areas, and so nutrients and contaminants don’t get delivered/removed. Heat and ice treatment is recommended to stimulate circulation, but I’m going to investigate if there are some stretches that might help.

I’m big on my stretching regime, but it is very time-consuming. It’s something I used to consider either boring or completely unnecessary. But after at least six months of almost disciplined use, it is finally paying real dividends. Sometimes I’d say it is miraculous. I’ve heard musicians observe similar things about practising scales. After about six months, the effect can be transformative: another example of the benefits of delayed gratification. Who’d have thought it?

Resting Heart Rate 51

Weight 72 kg

Mood

Total exercise energy consumed 757 kcal, 10 mins bike, 45 mins steady run

Foot discomfort again appears after 20 mins

How in touch are you with what your heart is telling you? In exercise, probably the best information you can get is from your heart. Heart rate reveals exertion, stress, infection, rate of recovery.

Every morning when you awake, it is possible to find out a lot about how the day might be, and how to organize it, if you were just to measure your resting heart rate. That can include work, exercise and leisure. If your resting heart rate is raised above its normal, that can be a warning signal. You might be suffering from stress, or still recovering from hard exercise in the previous couple of days.

It can also be a warning sign before other symptoms that you have caught a virus. Skip a meal, work too hard that day, exercise too vigorously, or go out in the evening when you should stay home, and what might have just been a sniffle could lay you up for a few days, or lead to a more debilitating injury.

When it comes to a training schedule for a marathon or half-marathon, you will find that the best will often refer to different exercise bands or zones as a percentage of your maximum heart rate.

Finding out your maximum heart rate can be approximated for free, but is best done by visiting a sports performance clinic, like the one at Bath University. For a little less than £100, you’ll get the same kind of information about your physiology that world-class athletes require, and you’ll be using the same facilities used by greats like Olympic hurdler Colin Jackson. If it sounds like a lot of money, realise that it may save you a lot in the long-run. It might just reveal some hidden talent, a possibility I’ll deal with in the next post.

The so-called long run started in earnest today. This is to build up my stamina and endurance, in other words get me used to spending a lot of time on my legs to last the three to four hours I expect my participation in the Flora London Marathon to last.

From here on I’ll be posting my vital resting and exercising statistics at the foot of each blog entry. I hope they’ll prove a useful training aid.

Resting Heart Rate 48

Weight 72 kg

Mood

Total exercise energy burned 1037 kcal, 10 mins bike, 1:08 hours run

Discomfort in left foot after 20-30 minutes, apparently associated with earlier tendon injury