I've been toying with the idea of picking each day's workout based on feel, rather than following some pre-written schedule, but that's proving harder than I anticipated. Since I run before school each day, and I'm not a morning person, I "feel" like an easy run every day. I know I'm well rested and recovered, since I haven't done a hard workout in more than two weeks now, but I just can't trust my instincts that early in the morning.
I have a pretty nice HRM sitting around. I was wondering if anyone has any experience using one of those to test recovery on a day-to-day basis. I dunno, maybe checking HR right out of bed, or a few minutes into a run. If it says you're recovered, you do whatever is the next workout you have planned. Would something like that work? Anyone have experience, advice or tips?
For background: I ran two years in HS and all four in college, PRs: 800m- 1:58.8, 3kSteeple- 9:27.7, 8kXC- 26:44. Graduated in 2005, trained on and off since then, haven't raced aside from a just-for-kicks 5k in march, 17:02. I'm in grad school right now and trying to get back into shape on my own, with only the mornings free for me to run.