I started a similar thread, but wasn't really specific with what I was asking, so I figured I'd try again:
I get up pretty early, and I'm not a morning person, so my body (particularly my legs) always "tell me" I'm not up for a hard workout; as a result, I end up doing easy runs every day. Since my sense of fatigued-vs-recovered is obviously unreliable this early in the morning, I was wondering: What is a reliable method of using a Heart Rate Monitor to determine if I'm recovered from my last workout and, therefore, ready for another one? Would I just measure my HR right out of bed? After stretching? After a few minutes of easy running? I figure now is a good time to establish a baseline, because I haven't run hard in a couple weeks (thanks to my groggy legs).
This isn't a problem for me when I can run in the afternoon, like I did in college, but I can't anymore because of grad school. I have a few-year-old polar s210 that I never use anymore (I used to do some road biking, for which it was useful) and it's got this little "vO2 Max test" called OwnIndex that maybe might be useful, too. I dunno. Ideas?