Did stick to the plan this week, and nearly clocked up 20km in a week for the 1st time – just backed off a little on Thursday, when I felt that completing the session would have kept me out of the water the next day. As it happened, a minor throat itch led me to postpone Friday’s session to Saturday.
As my coach, the irrepressible Brian Button, insists that he is not interested in the Manhattan graphs, but rather in monitoring heart rate, and specifically the time spent in the training zone, I have included a chart of my resting heart rate. Apart from seeming a little startled one morning it is steady around 60 bpm. This is taken for a full minute immediately on waking up in the morning, before getting up. Any significant increase from normal may indicate overtraining, and will indicate a short break from training.
Monitoring pulse rate during swimming with a heart rate monitor is not as efficient or easy as dry-land sports, so currently all swimming readings are taken by hand.