Uhler's Physiological Response to Tournament Play

I'm a stats freak. I love statistics. To further this obsession with collecting stats I purchased a heart monitor that records my heart rate during squash, or whatever activity I want. I can download exercise data to my computer for further analysis. I have been using it for every squash match I've played since early December 2004. It's an amazing little contraption.

Previous to my tournament play, I have found that during a difficult game of squash my heart rate gets as high as 195 beats per minute (or so). It doesn't stay around there for very long, but it does get quite high. My maximum heart rate is 203 (I took a VO2 Max which figured this out). My VO2 max is 39.2 just in case you were wondering -- and yes, I am working to improve it.

The final game of each of my matches I averaged a heart rate of 197! My maximum heart rate for each of the matches was 204, 210, and 212. Clearly well beyond my normal safe hear rate of 203. I averaged just over 11 minutes per game beyond my safe heart rate limit (in Zone 4).

I can probably attribute the increased heart rate to adrenalin and nerves. When do I call a let? Am I playing right? What are the spectators thinking? etc... I guess my tournament nerves will calm down after I've played a few more.