Sometimes waiting is good

I didn't run Thursday or Friday this week. I just couldn't face 40s and 50s and rain one more time. I can hardly believe that 8 weeks ago, I ran in 15 degree weather. Back then 50 degrees and rain would have seemed spectacular. But the weather was supposed to break this weekend, and I was willing to wait.

Sometimes waiting is good.

What a gorgeous day today. I started with 90 minutes of yoga at 9 a.m. then had two pieces of toast with PB and a G2 ,and watched part of a movie before heading out into sunny skies and 50-something degrees around 12:30.

I wanted to run 6 miles today. I decided to experiment with slowing down a bit and running 11:30 miles plus 1-minute walk breaks after each mile. The idea was if I slowed down, my heart rate would slow down. This experiment failed pretty miserably. The alarm telling me to slow down kept yelling at me the entire run, but I just couldn't slow my body down enough. I managed to run about 11:20 miles but by the end of the third mile my max heart rate was at 175 and the average was like 166. According to my age, my MHR is 173 but today I reached 177 and have reached 183 before. My MHR may be even higher than that, and no, I don't have heart palpitations or feel like I'm going to die when I hit these numbers. Still 164 -- even with a 185 MHR -- is too high for a LSD run. Oh well.

The run itself was great. I even ended up doing 7 miles, although the last mile was just a cool down mile which is why it's slower than the rest. But interesting that while I slowed down my max heart rate was higher than any other mile. As much as I don't like walk breaks, I definitely feel stronger after several miles. Guess I'll stay with them for a while. I still want to experiment with 5 min run/1 min walk on a shorter run.

What's interesting to me is Lap 5 and 6 because even though I was getting tired, (after steading incline for a mile or so) I used a few ChiRunning check-ins -- checking my posture, keeping my feet landing just behind my center of gravity and focusing on maintaining my lean -- and look what happened: two of the best miles in the entire run. I do love CR.

I know this is all boring for anyone reading this but lately I really need to use this blog just to track what's going on with my heart rate more than trying to be entertaining in any way.

Lap 1: 11:19
Lap 2: 11:22
Lap 3: 11:11
Lap 4: 11:36
Lap 5: 11:25
Lap 6: 10:54
Lap 7: 11:44

Ave. HR/Max HR
Lap 1: 157/163
Lap 2: 160/171
Lap 3: 166/175
Lap 4: 167/174
Lap 5: 167/173
Lap 6: 166/173
Lap 7: 166/177