Friday ,March 25,  late evening. Today was a warm day but cloudy and occasionally stormy throughout.

I took the day off today again.  It’s that whole listen to your body plan.  Last night I stayed up till 1 a.m. because I got caught in The Bourne Identity.  It is one of the movies you can’t get out of once you get into.  But I did sleep for 11 hours not rising until noon today.  That is probably the longest sleep time I’ve had since arriving in Florida.  In a discussion with Rich Refi on the phone last night I had to admit to him and myself that had not been monitoring my heart rate each morning.   He and I both agree that this is the key predictor of when an athlete is overtraining.   As soon as I began complaining about being overtired, that was the question he asked.  My answer was no.   So, duly chastised,  I have begun today to take my puse rate  each morning when I wake up.  It will now be included with my Daily Post.  This morning it was 54 BPM.  That has been my heart rate  for all the years that I have taken it. The theory is that if an athlete’s base heart rate rises for a few days in a row, that as a sign that he is not fully recovering from his workouts. The prescription is rest. So today I made the decision to swim in the very lovely pool that is right outside our window.  It is 7 weeks that I have been looking at the pool but the water has always been too cold I thought.  Today I decided, cold or not ,  I was going to swim.   I probably swam for 20 minutes .   For the first 10 minutes I had to share the pool with a wild goose who seemed quite disturbed that I was invading his pool.  He finally flew away and I completed  my swim. So that was the extent of my workout today .  I hope that my body feels better tomorrow.   I’m anxious to get a happy run back!  The days in Florida are growing short and the weather for the next few days is predicted to be mostly rainy with storms.  I hope the spring weather is coming to New Jersey.