I took my third run in the past 4 days this morning, as I attempt to recover from my latest illness. I ran 5.35 miles at 11:09/mile, which is nowhere near 100%, but an improvement over Sunday and Monday. Of note is that instead of my usual Vibram V-Runs, I ran in Xero HFS with a pair of wool socks. The temperature was in the low 40s, and this combination seemed to keep my feet a little bit warmer. On the flip side, my cadence was slightly down (177spm) and the front of the toe box got “hung up” a few times — not really enough to trip me up, but something I’m going to have to keep an eye on as I start take more runs in colder weather. It may be that my Xero Terraflex trail shoes, which are more rigid but fit my feet a little bit better, end up being better winter running shoes than the HFS. We’ll see.
Also today, I went back to using my Polar heart rate monitor. I had stopped using it because I was starting to have difficulty getting it to pair with my Apple Watch. I put a fresh CR2025 battery in it last night, after which it paired easily, so I’m hoping that was the problem. The watch’s built-in HRM had been working OK for me in lieu of the Polar, but more recently, for some reason, it has been flaky at the beginnings of my runs. It seems to take anywhere between 10-20 minutes before it registers an accurate heart rate, and during that time, it either registers no heart rate at all, or gives an inaccurately high reading (usually 175-180bpm). Oddly enough, this only seems to happen during running workouts; I have no issues with cycling workouts, walks, or the periodic readings the watch takes throughout the day. It eventually will correct itself and give an accurate reading for the rest of the run, but the initial flakiness was enough to get me to switch back to the Polar, which worked great for me today.