I pretty much stuck to my plan today. I got up ten minutes earlier to make sure I would have time to do my run and shower before having to head to work. It was about 60 degrees out this morning. I'm loving this warmer weather but I know we're likely to have another week or two of cold before spring really arrives. I started out at a different spot today. I did my warm up walk by walking out of the park and into another park that is adjacent to where I've been doing my running. That park has a pretty nice hill that I might make use of for some future workouts. I walked to the top of that hill and began my run. My goal was a nice easy 4 miles, keeping my pace at or slightly faster than 11:00/mile until the end of the 4th mile. Looking at my stats afterwards, I was pretty pleased with my pacing. I know it went up and down quite a bit within each mile, but overall I averaged just under 11:00/mile for the first 3 miles with times of 10:48, 10:54, and 10:45 for miles one, two and three respectively. Mile 4 came in at 10:12, mostly because I accelerated steadily over the final quarter mile until I was screaming along at 6:21/mile when my Garmin beeped that my workout was complete. Totally winded, I slowed up and jogged back to the car.
One interesting note - I went back and compared my heart rate from today's run to a couple of runs from previous weeks and here's what I found:
Date Dist Pace Avg HR
1/3/2011 3.01 11:56 158
1/27/2011 3.60 10:41 164
2/21/2011 4.00 10:40 156
It's interesting to look at my 1/3/11 run and see my pace of 11:56 and my heart rate at 158 compared to today's run at a pace of 10:40 with a heart rate of 156. Also interesting is my run on 1/27 which was at an almost identical average pace with a HR of 164. So, I'm running faster, but my heart rate is actually lower, and when I run the same pace as I did less than a month ago, my HR is significantly lower. That, my one faithful reader, is real measurable progress.
Today's Stats: I did 4 miles in 42:41 for an average pace of 10:40/mile.
Next up: I'll be in the pool tomorrow and running again on Wednesday. I haven't decided what Wednesday's run will be yet. I'm still researching speed improvement plans.
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