Friday - No run day

Been running and working in the yard while working and, you know....

I have been doing some speedwork on Tuesday/Thursday while getting in some decent "recovery" runs at other times. Ran nearly 9 miles last Saturday starting at 0800 and it was darn hot. Bleck. I had a hard time trying to get the run done because it was so stinking hot!

This week has been a little cooler and the fast runs were doable though challenging. I did a tempo run on Tuesday and it did not feel good. Usually you do the tempo run and feel pretty good afterward....not Tuesday. It was crappy and I was zonked.

I did a slow run on Wednesday trying to figure out my state of conditioning. I read an article on RRCA's website where you figure out your heart rate using the following formula: 180 - age and then add or subtract some amount depending running longevity, sickness, etc. Anyway, this result should approximate your aerobic threshold. After some serious math, my threshold came out to 139 BPM which I kind of knew from experience. I have not run with a HR monitor in some time because I was tired of over analyzing myself. Once you know your threshold, then you do a warm up and then run 3-5 miles at that threshold while timing your miles. You do this once every few weeks to trend your condition. So as you prepare for an event, say a marathon, then your mile times should drop. On the other hand, as you lose condition because your a lazy slob sitting on the couch watching TV and eating bon bons.

I ran the loop around my house that has some mild elevation change and it really affects your effort. I noticed that I could easily maintain 139 on the flats and then I had to really slow down going uphill and then speed up when running down hill. It was too much effort to alter my pace to keep the 139 average. My average on each lap turned out to be 141 which was not too bad since it shifted from 134 to 146.

Well I have not downloaded my results to see my mile averages. I think next time I will simply run on the track to better determine my 1600 meter times. Although running 4-5 miles on a 400m track does not sound like fun. However, those 10,000m runners run nearly a million laps during their race, so what is 20-25 laps?

I did 6x400m repeats with a jog between each fast lap. My average time on each lap was 1:22. It is hard to believe that I could run 60 second repeats (10 laps with 30-60s rest between each). After I finished the laps, I jogged 1600m and then did 6x100m strides on the infield with bare feet.

Tomorrow we will run the trails at OMSP. I think I will slow down on this run and smell the roses (although I have never seen any..).

Heart issues? Nothing lately. Go figure.