Period-tracking and sports watches

Since I haven't wrote anything in a while here, here's why: Got a bit caught up with life a lot of huge changes in my work life, social life, heath-wise, living situation-wise and even in the people in my life. While this isn't per se about any of my recent life changes, it is related to an activity that's lately consumed a lot of my life - which is running and sports in general. I recently ran my first Half Marathon at Stonehill Founder's race and finished with a surprise podium finish. This allowed me to qualify for my first ever Marathon - the Mumbai Marathon in January of 2025 😄- See more info on my races here.

Anyways, being a menstruating woman who's pretty active, I've learn over time that I have to train with my menstrual cycle. And I don't say 'around' my period for a reason, because after doing this for a while, I've realised that I feel very different while exercising in different phases of my cycle. Some days, I feel unstoppable like Flash - somedays despite all the conditions being right, I just can't sprint. Somedays I can bounce back like a tennis ball, on somedays recovery is much slower. Identifying where I am at in my menstrual cycle, helps me plan my activities, recovery and nutrition in a much better way.

For instance, during the first weeks post the end of your period, Estrogen starts to slowly increase, enhancing glycogen utilization. Glycogen is the stored form of carbohydrates, which during endurance exercise can lead to better performance and less fatigue. Additionally, Estrogen also improves the oxidation of fatty acids, resulting in increased fat utilization during activity. Estrogen also boosts collagen production, which helps with injury prevention. In summary, I feel great & I'm unstoppable in the first 2 weeks of my cycle.

In contrast, high levels of progesterone during the luteal phase (post ovulation) can increase muscle breakdown. For me personally, even intuitively, I feel like my body starts demanding different nutritional requirements during different phases of my cycle - which scientifically also makes sense :D ; Turns out the cravings kicking in closer to my period, wasn't just being delulu.

Anyways, I know I kind of, lost track with my thoughts here. But what I was trying to say was that, for a female athlete, your cycle changes a lot for your training. Especially when you are training for a high endurance race, amongst other things. Since I've gotten pretty serious with running lately, I decided it was about time that I invest in a sports-watch to closely monitor and track my performance. These watches come with customizable training programs tailored to various fitness levels and marathon goals, which adapt dynamically with your performance trends. They even go to the extend of tracking your recovery, training load and sleep while making these customisations.

I personally use a Coros Pace 3, but what I'm saying pretty much applies to most sports watches (with a few exceptions). When I decided to put my money into a watch, I kind of thought that it would go without saying that sports watches that go into so much detail with their accuracy levels, data collection and customisation would have definitely accounted for menstrual cycles. But I was wrong, turns out most sports watches in fact don't. In fact, the Coros Pace 3 doesn't even allow me to manually track my period on their platform, to better comprehend my performance in the context of where I was during my cycle. While this was very disheartening for me, I guess it's just the reality that tech developed my men, just constantly seems to exclude women and their basic physiology.

Thanks for listening for my rant of the day 🙏

Byeeee