So far this year (short as it has been so far) I’ve been averaging about 20 km per day. It’s as good a start as I could have hoped for. It augurs well for good results in the races I’ll be attempting. More on those in posts to come.

One of the novel aspects of my new Garmin watch is that it measures heart rate (through the wrist). Previously, athletes needed to wear a strap around their chest in order to record heart rate data. I could never be bothered going to that much trouble. But now it’s there right in front of me when I download the watch data.

The watch asks you for various personal information, including your age.  Your age allows the watch to calculate your theoretical maximum heart rate, according to the established formula: Max heart rate = 220 – age.

Therefore, my maximum theoretical heart rate should be 165 beats per minute. However, I have no problem exerting myself enough to get my heart rate considerably over 165 – closer to 190, in fact. This morning my heart rate reached at least 165, at which point the watch refused to acknowledge that my heart rate could go any higher. Maybe I should just tell it my age is 10, in which case it would allow me to reach an hypothetical maximum of 210 (not that I’d ever actually reach that high).

Here’s another photo from the Big Sur region of the Californian coastline during my run around the world. You can see a bridge in the background that I ran over. It’s not the famed Bixby Bridge, but not too far from it.