I took a walk/jog today again. My pulse was not super low, but it did not stay up either even after five quarters and 800 calories. So I guess I still had a lot of charge left. After all, I did not exercise at all yesterday (well, except for my commute, about 25 minutes of walking).

My pulse was super low today again. My batteries must be fully charged and supercharged. I didn’t exercise yesterday because of recurring gut pains. It does not seem to have stopped whatever process it is that charges the batteries of my body though.  But after 500 calories, I had to give up because a half ingrown toenail acted up. I’ve tended to it but didn’t jog more today and won’t be tomorrow either.

After a couple rainy days in a row (a rare thing here on Norway’s south coast) my pulse was super low, even by my standards. I could jog longer before my pulse reached 130 (that is where I usually drop back into walking) and it took shorter before it fell to 115 (where I go from walking to jogging). In RPG terms I would call it a 10% boost to recovery for a duration of 40 minutes. Actually it was probably slightly below 10%, but fairly close.

I usually get this if I have not exercised in two or more days, unless I have a fever in the meantime. I believe ordinary humans have it too, because it is common to rest the second day before a race, says Google, and only do brief exercise the last day. So this must be a well known phenomenon, but I have not found any name for it. I don’t know what causes it either. It is not glycogen, I think, for I almost never use up my glycogen. When you run a marathon, you will use up your glycogen at some point and it is called “bonking” or “hitting the wall”. Your body becomes heavy and even shaky and you cannot run even if you try, although you can still walk. Some people become able to run again, albeit slower, a so-called second wind. And of course if they drink sugar water, they will be able to run on that once it hits the blood.

I’d love to know what this “supercharging” is that lets me perform better after two days without exercise. But even if I don’t know how it works, I still make use of it.

My pulse hasn’t continued to go down – it has actually gone just a little bit up. Not a lot though, 5-10 beats depending on the day, from the minimum I wrote about last time. I walk, with some jogging, most days when it is not raining. It very rarely rains two days in a row here on Norway’s south coast, more like two days a week, although during July it is more like three days a week.

What I do is walk casually for ten minutes to warm up. By then my pulse is usually just over 110, so I jog a short stretch to get it to 125 at least. Then I walk till it is just over 115, and jog till it is 130. I repeat this as needed, and after a while it stabilizes around 120. As long as it is 117 or above, I don’t stress it further. I admit that sounds random, but I’ve been doing this most days of the week for months, and I recognize certain “levels” of functioning. It is a bit like the stock exchange, where a stock may have a ceiling and a floor. If it goes through one of these, it takes on a different formation which is less predictable. My pulse is like that.

Apart from that I can’t think of any great news concerning my body. This is good. Long may it live, but we can only do so much for that and leave the rest to providence.

My white jogging shoes are now broken in enough for an hour’s walk without any ill effects. These were the ones that gnawed a hole in my skin – made a blister and burst it – the first weekend I had them. They seem to be adapting to me, and I to them. Even so, after that hour I stopped by at home and changed into another pair, so that’s how I got to 950. Not a personal record, although with my lower pulse it takes more exercise to get the same estimated calories as before. Not sure that actually means my body has become more energy-efficient. The heart rate is just a way to guess at the metabolism after all.

Today my pulse was higher than usual, within normal human range. (Thus the headline.) Still, I had barely been outdoors the whole weekend (one half-hour trip on Saturday) and not exercised after work on Friday either. It rained most of yesterday and the day before, and I took that as an excuse to rest a bit. I don’t see it as a Sign, exactly – I kind of hope God has more important things in mind when deciding the weather for the south coast of Norway – but rain is so uncommon here, it is a nice excuse for a break. To have a rainy Saturday and a rainy Sunday in a row is particularly uncommon. It may be the first time this year, for what I can remember.

Today I took a five quarter walk. With the higher pulse I did not jog more than a couple times early on, otherwise I was in the target zone pretty much the whole time. I did walk across a large hill though. In the end I burned around 800 calories extra, judging from my pulse clock. (There’s a bit of afterburn, but it was close to normal after an hour and a half, when I had burned 950 calories according the the Polar. With about 100 calories per hour in basic metabolism, that lands me on the 800 extra. I think the watch exaggerates a bit, but that’s OK, I doubt I can put in 800 extra calories in a day even if I try.