Reviewing my heartrate monitors log together with the GPS from yesterdays way to gravelly 10k race I did run, I notice a direct correlation between heart-rate and amount of discomfort the ground caused. This is especially well to see since this was a round track which was run twice. While it is a flat course, the spikes happen at the same places (and yes, I remember the places of discomfort, every second of it...)
Barefoot on smooth ground with same speed, approx same environmental parameters gives me approx 15 points less on the heartrate monitor. On especially evil parts of the track I do see a sharp increase, even spikes that go close to HR-max.
The question for me now would be whether the increased heart rate is due to more discomfort (I'd call it pain on parts of the track) or due to more brain attention to avoid the evil obstacles in those areas. I've seen it on multiple occasions but on this track it was very clearly visible due to the two rounds, it correlates very well.
The track was not exactly nice to run on, but at least I managed to run through it.
Jörn
Barefoot on smooth ground with same speed, approx same environmental parameters gives me approx 15 points less on the heartrate monitor. On especially evil parts of the track I do see a sharp increase, even spikes that go close to HR-max.
The question for me now would be whether the increased heart rate is due to more discomfort (I'd call it pain on parts of the track) or due to more brain attention to avoid the evil obstacles in those areas. I've seen it on multiple occasions but on this track it was very clearly visible due to the two rounds, it correlates very well.
The track was not exactly nice to run on, but at least I managed to run through it.
Jörn