My body is speaking. Am I listening? (updated)

Updated, see end of entry.

It's Saturday morning. I should be just finishing my long run. Instead I am sitting at home, checking Facebook and, now, writing this. What happened?

Am I sick? No. No fever, no sore throat, no runny nose. But I know things are not right. 

Yesterday afternoon I did an easy bike ride, just to see how my new glasses work. Good news! No double vision. But within minutes of starting my HR went into zone 6, at what I would consider my absolute max HR. I was not working hard. I was not breathing hard. I was wearing a tri kit rather than the usual bike jersey, which features a snug fitting fabric with lots of Lycra. I recalled Garmin had an issue with "tech" fabrics a few years ago, but I thought they fixed that. Besides, I have used this top before, many times, without any problems. I pulled over and without taking the strap off used water from my bottle to wet the pads again. No change. I checked my FR935. Same reading. Then I realized it was taking the signal from the strap, not the built-in optical sensor. I decided to continue my ride and toss out the HR data on TrainingPeaks.

I did notice I felt unusually tired on uphill sections. I was only roaming around Kahala, not wanting to brave the highway until I knew my eyes were okay. I didn't give it a second thought, only that this my first time riding on the road on my tri bike since February, it was a rest day and I wanted to save my strength for Saturday's long run. No other worrisome signs. No dizziness, no out of breath feeling. I was fascinated at how well I could see.

This morning I woke up feeling fine. Every morning I do an HRV reading using my phone and the HRV4 Training app, followed by a weigh-in. This morning was a repeat of the previous two or three. The app did not like the data it was getting, and I could see long gaps between sections of normal looking pulse. I have seen that before, and my cardiologist pointed this out on my EKG. It didn't bother him, so why worry? My typical HRV baseline runs around 7. Due to the recent outlier readings my baseline is now at 7.7 and this morning I got 11. A huge outlier. No significant change in HR during these morning tests.

HRV

Heart Rate

I mentioned I try to step on the scale after taking my HRV reading. I use a Withings because it uploads automatically to TrainingPeaks. I don't always take the time, but when I did this week I got more weird results, a five pound spike yesterday morning. That has to be mostly water retention. I have seen on occasion a swing of two or three pounds, typically after a hard day, but never this much. I think this is noteworthy.

From the very start of this morning's run I was on the lookout for more strap issues, and sure enough. I was just starting when my HR red lined, right after my usual warm-up routine. I decided to go with the optical sensor in the watch. Back to the car, take off the strap, walk away and wait for the watch to let go of the link and start using the built-in. HR looked OK, so off I went (data chart below). 

I always do a ten minute brisk walk in power zone one before actually running. As soon as I started running my HR started to climb. I was looking at power, watching as my legs transitioned from stomping to something lighter and more graceful I struggle with this. Then I started to feel tired, as if I were running tempo. I switched to HR display and sure enough I was at tempo, and climbing. I decided to walk a bit until it settled down, thinking I had started too hard. As you can see from the top line on the graph, it did not go down.

At this point I had learned two things. My HRM strap was not at fault, and my high HR was not due to starting too hard. It had to be something else, but what? I decided I might as well abandon the workout so I turned around and walked back to the car. As I approached my starting point on the highway I decided to collect more data. I stood in the shade to see if my HR would come down. It did. Then I began walking again, so see what would happen. It shot right back up and in less than two minutes was right up there where it had been, way above my LTHR, way above my 5 min HR. Again, nothing else matched, respiration very comfortable. Back at the car I sat and waited for HR to come down, and it did, until the mid 80s, at which point it leveled off.

I always get a laugh when TrainingPeaks sees this kind of data. I got a new threshold HR, and set a bunch of year's best. Fortunately those honors are withdrawn when I delete the HR track, which I did. 170 bpm? Never in my entire life.

The usual application of HRV has it that the higher the number, the less fatigue, go out and kill it. When HRV trends low it is time to reduce training load. I think my poor quality readings and off the chart values are caused my an irregular heart beat, making this HRV data useless, if not counter productive.

As I was working on this it came to me to check my BP. I was doing this every morning a few weeks ago when I started having a little vertigo -- nothing new for me. I was averaging 128/74. Today, it was much lower, 118/67. Cause, or effect? Seems to me that if my heart is not getting a smooth, deep, full stroke it will be beating faster to keep the blood moving, and pressure will be lower. Maybe not so much faster as noisier, so my Garmin interprets the noise as a fast heart rate. But I am no cardiologist, and I take comfort in knowing that I passed a treadmill stress test a couple months ago with flying colors. No obstruction. Nothing to worry about.

I thought that maybe the spin class we did on Thursday was the culprit, but now I am not so sure. The TSS rating for that workout was well below average and it did not feel all that stressful. In looking over my week I do not see anything out of the ordinary. I did mess things up two weeks ago and did not run as much as I should have, but that does not explain this.

Sleep has been normal. Seven to eight hours a night. No travel, noting special other than the boredom of not going anywhere.

For now I am treating this as a response to excessive stress, and treating it with two or three days off. I would like to do the Sunday ride in Waikiki, when Kalakaua will be closed. That will be, literally, a ride in the park.

Update 6/15

The Sunday bike was absolutely normal. Of course I kept an eye on my head unit. Most of the ride was very easy, but then most of last Friday's ride was the same. There was one time when two of us got dropped due to traffic and we rode hard to catch on. No spike, hardly a bump. Min/Avg/Max for the ride was 72/89/108, and 108 is smack in the middle of my zone 2.

This morning added more data and confusion. HRV was normal. BP was a little high but normal for me. Over the weekend it was a great number but below average for me.

Sat 118/67

Sun 119/76

Mon 131/78

No swim this morning due to box jellyfish so I did my usual walk. I live on a hill so it is more than just a walk. I started up and in thirty seconds my HR was in the red at 150. I turned around and started back down, and noticed that unlike Saturday's run my HR was coming down. I walked down some more, then turned around to head back up and it was 120. I expected it to shoot up again when I started climbing, but no. It kept going down. Five minutes in it was 116, ten minutes in it was 112, and at the top of the climb at sixteen minutes in it was 108. That's right. The entire time I was walking hard uphill my HR was falling, and I felt fine.

This is starting to sound more and more like an adrenal response issue. I am going to keep an eye on this, but at the same time I don't want to worry too much about it. My heart and body are strong. I have no symptoms associated with heart failure such as chest pain or shortness of breath. I actually feel great. I am going to call my GP and describe what has been going on, and see what he has to say. I'm the athlete, and the coach, but he is the doctor. We each have our role to play.

One thing leads to another

All three of the activities that comprise triathlon involve balance. Transition too, if you count standing on one foot. What makes swimming different from the others is the lack of contact with the ground. Floating in water, your body can be going in any direction. The only thing that keeps you level is balance. 

Terry Laughlin identified three major components of swimming: Balance, Streamlining, and Propulsion. I put balance first, because without good balance the other two suffer.

Every sport requires practice, and none more so than swimming. To emphasize this point Laughlin borrowed a term from yoga, mindful practice. In Total Immersion swimming we do not just swim laps. We constantly scan our body to root out problems, then set focal points to address them and monitor the results. 

This process is on-going and without end. Laughlin borrowed another term to describe this habit of continuous improvement, the Japanese word kaizen (kai = change, zen = good). To me this does not mean change is good so much as that improvement requires change. Why does this require special terminology? Because to change what we are invested in is scary.

Currently I set aside my Monday swim as drill day. A time to reflect on what was not going well on the weekend long swim, and address it with short, focused lengths of twenty or thirty yards. Lately I have been focused on balance. Saturday’s swim exposed a flaw I have felt before, where my feet swing side to side in a “U” shape. I must have spent a good fifteen minutes this morning focused on my legs, my kick, my quads and abs engagement. I felt improvement, but it was fleeting.

For some reason my lack of progress triggered a memory. The great running coach Bobby McGee was talking about gait issues and pointed out that often the cause of a movement issue in the legs is caused by something not right in the upper body. I recall he used the phrase “look further up the kinetic chain.” I realized that just maybe my legs are swinging around in response to what is going on above my waist.

The first place I looked was my head position. Sure enough, I was lifting. Not a lot, but even a little will cause your legs to sink. Next my arms, and sure enough, my elbows were not bent enough during recovery and my right arm was entering the water too far from my center line. What about rotation? Yep, over rotating to the right, trying desperately to balance that arm flailing around.

As soon as I got my elbow at a right angle the entry point was easy to correct. I worked on rotation by breathing every four strokes. On the cycle when I did not breath I paid close attention to where my shoulder ended up, then made sure it went no further during the breath. Of course it did, just like a kid told not to eat any cookies. But I sensed improvement and a significant reduction in leg swing.

On my website I talk about getting started with Total Immersion swimming. Like anything worth doing there is a skill set involved, and with it a specialized vocabulary. Eventually you reach a point where you no longer need structured workouts. Learn to feel what your body is doing, pick a focal point that should address the issue, and practice.

I notice that swimmers at the beach like to go long. For triathlon training there should be one long swim per week. Biking and running demand their own time, so it is hard to fit in more than three swims a week. The issue is not just time, but fatigue, and the older you are, the greater the challenge. I have those other two swim workouts focused on a particular aspect of swimming, and break the session into multiple short segments. Swim a bit, notice what needs work. Stop. Think about it. Start again. Do not practice bad form. Find and fix what needs fixing, then repeat the improved form. When you lose it, stop, think about it, play with it, start again. Do this in waist deep water so you can stand and rest as you think about what just happened. Mindful practice.

One more favorite Terry Laughlin quote, “Do not practice struggle.”