Dr. Michael Kemelmen, a cardiologist, gave me a stress test today.
He cleared up what it is that I remember, from my last stress test some years ago, as being "odd" about my heart rhythm: I have "premature atrial contractions," or PACs. They're not to be confused with "premature ventricular contractions," PVCs. Neither PACs nor PVCs are particularly worrisome, but there's a small chance that PACs may be associated with valve problems, so I have to go back next week for an echocardiogram.
Dr. K says my "extra heartbeats" may be confusing my simple heart rate monitor, causing it to read high. That sounds like as good an explanation as any for why my measured heart rates seem too high for the amount of effort I'm expending when I jog. When I was hooked up to close to a dozen electrodes for purposes of the stress test, the final phase had me subjectively working much harder than I seem to be doing when I run, say, a 14-minute mile. Yet my measured heart rate was the same: about 165 beats per minute.
I imagine Dr. K's ultra-sophisticated BPM counter factors out my "extra heartbeats" from PACs. So when my cheap monitor says 165, the real number is lower, and I'm actually in the proper aerobic zone which books on exercise recommend.
Assuming my echocardiogram comes out normal, all this doesn't explain why I can't yet beat a roughly 13-minute mile, after two months of working out.
Nor does it explain why I have needed these last four days to recover from my prior near-daily workouts over the period of two months. After going to Basic Fitness class last Thursday — this is Monday — Friday I was near-comatose, and each day since then has seen me gradually get closer to a normal level of energy.
So I'm thinking that I simply can't sustain workouts more often than every other day. My recovery time is apparently too slow.
Failing to honor that constraint may be what keeps my jogging times too high. I've noticed that the improvements I actually have made in my jogging pace, recently getting down to a mile in just over 13 minutes, have tended to come after a day off.
So I'm thinking of cutting back to Tuesday and Thursday mornings at the Basic Fitness venue, plus one weekend morning jogging. That makes sure I don't work out on back-to-back days ... unless I decide to walk on the other weekend day. Then we'll see.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Monday, September 12, 2005
Making Some Progress ...
Today I did the 2-mile loop at Lake Elkhorn in Columbia, Maryland, in what I imagine to be record time for me ... a personal best of 26:16. That computes to 13:08 per mile. I don't think I've ever run a mile that fast. Looking back at times I kept track of in 2000 for running various routes, I find the fastest I recorded then was 1.4 miles at 13:55 per mile.
My heart rate today was in the 150s for the first mile, roughly, and ascended into the 160s for the second, which has many uphill stretches but few if any downhills. It got up to 168 beats per minute at the end. That is still, strictly speaking, "too high," by comparison with my maximum rate of 170. But I wasn't laboring; I wasn't winded. I didn't feel like I was working any harder that I did in making previous, slower circuits of the lake. It felt good.
This came after a Sunday of rest following a Saturday on which I limited my fitness efforts to a brisk half-hour walk.
I'm still experiencing a little bit of lower back pain as a result of Doing Lake Centennial on a Saturday Morn a couple of weeks ago, and putting out too much effort after I had taken too few days off in the immediately preceding time frame. The effort I put out today was on a par with that effort, so I'm waiting to see if the "other shoe drops" in the next day or so, and I develop symptoms of having overdone it.
But the backache isn't as bad, or as constant, as it was. Tentatively, knock on wood, whatever injury I sustained is healing.
Next week, on my doctor's advice, I'm having a cardiologist give me a stress test. I had told Dr. Moore that I consider my heart rates to be too high for the amount of effort I'm expending and for the relatively slow per-mile times I'd been recording. Today's run shows that at least the latter anomaly may be abating.
And that's very, very encouraging. It looks like even "high beaters" like me can increase their aerobic capacity, slowly and steadily, by keeping up the conditioning effort ... even if they are working in a heart-rate zone that is above what the textbooks "officially" recommend.
Tomorrow, I begin the twice-weekly "Basic Fitness" course given by the Department of Recreation & Parks of nearby Howard County.
Interesting note: I read recently in a newspaper article about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that some but by no means all CFS sufferers can increase their energy levels and reduce their fatigue by means of "very gradual increases in aerobic exercise." I don't suffer from CFS, but it looks as if the slender margins between my maximum heart rate and the rates I'm undergoing when I run (say) a 13:08 mile are allowing me to make no more than "very gradual increases" as well.
The moral here seems to be: patience, patience, patience. This is to be a permanent lifestyle change, after all. I want to jog for the rest of my (hopefully, long) life. It doesn't really matter how gradual the buildup is, of necessity, going to be. What matters is that it does seem to be (slowly) having the desired effect. I can run fairly long distances faster than I could before, at the same rate of effort.
My heart rate today was in the 150s for the first mile, roughly, and ascended into the 160s for the second, which has many uphill stretches but few if any downhills. It got up to 168 beats per minute at the end. That is still, strictly speaking, "too high," by comparison with my maximum rate of 170. But I wasn't laboring; I wasn't winded. I didn't feel like I was working any harder that I did in making previous, slower circuits of the lake. It felt good.
This came after a Sunday of rest following a Saturday on which I limited my fitness efforts to a brisk half-hour walk.
I'm still experiencing a little bit of lower back pain as a result of Doing Lake Centennial on a Saturday Morn a couple of weeks ago, and putting out too much effort after I had taken too few days off in the immediately preceding time frame. The effort I put out today was on a par with that effort, so I'm waiting to see if the "other shoe drops" in the next day or so, and I develop symptoms of having overdone it.
But the backache isn't as bad, or as constant, as it was. Tentatively, knock on wood, whatever injury I sustained is healing.
Next week, on my doctor's advice, I'm having a cardiologist give me a stress test. I had told Dr. Moore that I consider my heart rates to be too high for the amount of effort I'm expending and for the relatively slow per-mile times I'd been recording. Today's run shows that at least the latter anomaly may be abating.
And that's very, very encouraging. It looks like even "high beaters" like me can increase their aerobic capacity, slowly and steadily, by keeping up the conditioning effort ... even if they are working in a heart-rate zone that is above what the textbooks "officially" recommend.
Tomorrow, I begin the twice-weekly "Basic Fitness" course given by the Department of Recreation & Parks of nearby Howard County.
Interesting note: I read recently in a newspaper article about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that some but by no means all CFS sufferers can increase their energy levels and reduce their fatigue by means of "very gradual increases in aerobic exercise." I don't suffer from CFS, but it looks as if the slender margins between my maximum heart rate and the rates I'm undergoing when I run (say) a 13:08 mile are allowing me to make no more than "very gradual increases" as well.
The moral here seems to be: patience, patience, patience. This is to be a permanent lifestyle change, after all. I want to jog for the rest of my (hopefully, long) life. It doesn't really matter how gradual the buildup is, of necessity, going to be. What matters is that it does seem to be (slowly) having the desired effect. I can run fairly long distances faster than I could before, at the same rate of effort.
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