Miles for the week: 11 (2/2/2/5) PRE-TRAINING WEEK 1!
5 miles LSD: 56:41, average heart rate 148
Weight: 119
Resting HR: 44
Fitness test: 51
A wonderful long run! Perfect day: cool, dry, sunny, cloudless blue sky. I’ve been trying to focus a little bit on quick light steps (“running on eggshells”) and clearly that helped me run more efficiently. I even had to switch to a 3/3 rhythm for a stretch (3 steps on inhale, 3 on exhale) when 2/2 has always been the only comfortable rhythm. But I didn’t spend too much time working on that so I could also just relax and enjoy the run. The other thing I did differently was run the last mile or so at a medium pace; that’s based on Hal Higdon recommending a 3/1 split to help train for speed (although it’s supposed to be on a long enough run that the first three-fourths deplete the glycogen from your slow-twitch muscles, i.e. 60 to 90 minutes). You run at your normal LSD pace until the last quarter of the workout. Makes sense.
Higdon describes 3 paces: “jog”, 50-65% of maximum heart rate, “fairly light” effort (this is a pace that DOES NOT exist for me, at least not yet! I cannot run slowly enough to keep my heart rate down that much!); “easy”, 65-75% of MHR, “somewhat hard” effort (easy is hard? that’s like small being tall); “medium”, 75-80%, “hard” effort (medium is hard too). Why so confusing? He also defines the “easy” pace as being “conversational (not a jog)”. Huh? The slowest I can possibly run is barely conversational. Well, I’ll continue to adapt new ideas to my own training however it seems to work best for me.
The oldest goslings in the three pairs of Canada geese are almost 3/4 the size of their parents now–they’ve got adult proportions but look a little portlier, and still sort of fuzzy. Very cute! During the week the three families were in the meadow across the road from the pond, and only the adult heads were visible (like periscopes) in the tall grass. Daisies are just starting in the sunnier areas; also blackberry, red and white clovers, plantain, and grasses. I did spot a very few phloxes this week. Columbines are flowering in people’s gardens, but I’ve only ever seen one wild columbine around here, deep in the woods in the state game lands.
I’m amazed my resting heart rate is dropping so quickly. I haven’t even started real training yet! Cool that when I started 10 weeks ago, my “fitness test” was lower than my resting HR, and they crossed last week.