Pre-season fitness.

Another quick blast around the local woods today as part of my fitness regime. I have to admit though I've been slack with this - partly down to the fact that it's been cold and the other thing is I'm doing the usual pre-season DIY chores.

I've got a blood pressure monitor so that measures other values... Diastolic and Systolic blood pressure. In my chart below the last 2 digits are my heart rate. In each column the row at the top is the measurement as soon as I get in from the exercise. The number on the right highlighted yellow is my heart rate. Then each row of numbers beneath the top row is the measurement done at minute intervals.

From what I can gather, what you do is take the 3rd measurement e.g. 2 minutes after finishing the exercise and subtract that from the top number. That difference is an indication of how good your recovery rate is and how healthy your heart is. 

• Less than 22:  Your biological age is slightly older than your calendar age.

You can see therefore when I first did this around April 1st my recovery rate was 9 so my heart is 'Biologically older than my age, but you can see with each days it seems and the increase in activity the number is going up, so I'm quite optimistic, I'm happy with the jump between 14th and 15th April, and I'm hoping this'll improve as the week goes on. I'd like to see it somewhere near the 50 mark as that'll mean my heart/biological age is younger than my actual age. But in the short term anything over 22 will be good. 

Another value that you need to look at is your heart rate after exercise...At my age my heart rate after exercise should be between 102 and 136, it seems the faster your heart beats the younger you should be... See a chart here As you can see here below this figure is improving too, so for the moment as I write 15/4/19 things are looking positive. 

With the season coming up I need to get on this a bit more, so I'll endeavor to do this once a day from now on, with an increase in the running.

My circuit is around a wood and takes around 18-20 minutes. It has a few hills, with two biggish hills and the aim is to run up as many of these hills as fast as possible as I get fitter and then to run and walk sporadically throughout the walk, to recreate the running and pausing when batting. 

I'll update this post as the days go on.

16/4/19 - Thinking about this and looking at the data, I realised there may be an issue whereby the last bit of running I do before coming in and making the measurement is a couple of hundred yards short of my house. Therefore I'm already in recovery from a period of intense activity when I take the first measurement, so today I made sure the last 200 feet or so was a sprint to the front door and the data is significantly different...

 You can now see that having sprinted at the end, my heart rate is far higher... 127 and then two minutes later the recovery far more significant... 35! So, from now on this'll be what I'll do as I reckon this is far more realistic. Another thing you'll see is that I'm doing this twice a day at the moment.

January waffling

It's mid January and I've got my head around the idea of having high blood pressure now and everything feels pretty normal. I'm on Amlodipine pills 10mg for the moment and I'm hoping to get off of them if possible. I've got a blood pressure machine that straps to my wrist and measures my blood pressure and the measurements have steadily declined right from the outset. In addition I've changed my diet dramatically in accordance with the suggestions that the British Heart Foundation suggest, so with a bit of luck if the dosage is reduced the other changes that I've made might sustain the normal blood pressure readings? Who knows, but I've got an appointment with the nurse this coming Wednesday and she's going to look at my data that I've been recording and do some blood tests for things like Cholesterol as far as I can recall.

The only thing that I have been neglecting which doesn't help is the exercise component, but in the last day or so I've been making a start to get ready for the new season. I ate so much less than I would normally do over Christmas and people at work have been saying that I look like I've lost weight, so that's probably a good sign. I've now just to get some muscles, strength, stamina and agility back.

Another good thing that I've noticed is that my Plantar Fasciitis seems to have eased of after over two years of it and this has happened with no intervention. About a year or so ago I found a website, forum and a bunch of videos on Youtube by an Australian Podiatrist, who's qualifications put him at the top of his game. This bloke was in his late 50's pretty much the same as me and was still participating in sport of some sort - running possibly, I don't remember exactly, but he also had PF and he and his Podiatrist mates had pages and pages of info and discussions on the matter - what they were recommending for different patients and how much success was to be had with the different approaches for these patients. But, the bottom line seemed to be that there was no sure fire cure, there were recommendations that were made because there was potential for some increase in comfort, but the overall sense was that there was a placebo effect in recommending treatment (a) or (b) more than an actual proven medical benefit. 

The main bloke writing the article was massively dismissive of all the stuff on Youtube, making the point that there was no all-singing all dancing cure for PF, because when it came down to it, PF in many instances if left alone suddenly (like mine has) dissipates and disappears. He went on to make the point that in my case for instance, if I'd seen a video on Youtube that has recommended rubbing brown sauce on my feet for 15 minutes a month ago and decided to try it, I might now be tempted to post stuff on Youtube about brown sauce being a miracle cure for PF, when in fact it had just gone away of it's own accord. I'm just happy that mine seems to have almost gone for the moment and fingers crossed I'll be able to bowl this season without that at the back of mind.

That'll do for now, I might waffle on about plans for variations for this coming season in the next couple of days.