I read a great post on a friend of mine’s site that looked at the importance of checking the morning heart rate to judge adequate recovery after exercise… Now it was no surprise that my heart rate was a little elevated over the last few days, I’ve been exceptionally busy, haven’t slept well and kept my spinning schedule. The surprise was how elevated it was.
From the post: “How to use this data:
Keep an eye on your resting morning heart rate in the two or three days after a hard workout. If it’s significantly elevated from its normal average (7 or more beats per minute), that’s a sign that you’re not fully recovered from the workout. Remember, there is going to be some variability in your daily heart rate regardless of your recovery level, do don’t be concerned if you’re 3 to 4 bpm over your normal average on a given day. In my experience, it takes a reading that’s 7 bpm higher than normal to signify excessive training fatigue.”
My average morning heart rate is in the low 50’s, call it 52. Over the last several days I was up around the low to mid 60’s. I took a couple of much needed recovery days off, got some fantastic sleep last night (upwards of seven hours and actually slept in till 5!). This morning, after a cup of coffee and a few moments of trying to figure out what I would write about, feeling like a hundred dollars, my heart rate was 48.
I’ve been keeping track of my heart rate (sparsely) for well over a year now and I’ve never been under 52. So, I have some improvement mixed in with a decent recovery, albeit a slow one. The improvement is quite surprising considering I wound down my season a month ago. If I had to guess, the increase my Saturday run from 5-6 miles to 10-13 plus the spinning intervals once or twice a week on the trainer is responsible.
I’m not going to spend too much time trying to figure it out, it’s my time to celebrate the Christmas season with my favorite movie while the wife (who hates it) and kids sleep…
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Fit Recovery 
Great post. Conversely, after a hard workout is it good to see a little elevation in the am? I might start monitoring this. Great new tool!
Time to pay the bills before my massage. 😉
That is the idea if I read the post correctly – the idea behind checking in the morning is that it takes a lot of variables out if the equation that can interfere with the reading.
Awesome!