The continued prayer is, “Lord keep me focused. Keep my mind stayed on You. Help me to bring You praise. I know You believe in me. Please help me in my unbelief. Amen.”
Tonight’s run was GREAT!!!! This was really the first time I had set out to do a run strictly for time. Usually, I don’t care about my speed, I am just happy to be out there doing something good for my body. I decided to leave Sarah at home because I didn’t want to be distracted by anything.
This was going to be my standard, short workout route and I was only really interested in that first mile. I wanted to make sure I was pushing myself, but not exhausting myself, for the entire first mile so I could shave a few seconds off of my usual 12:35 time. This time doesn’t bother me because I do it pretty consistently when I’m training on this route, but somehow on race day, I tend to keep up a 9 minute mile pace. There really is something about being out there with a number pinned to your belly. Also, the first part of the route is on a slight incline and training on any incline is going to be helpful on race day.
So I reset my Omron HR100C and started off. As soon as I get out the door, I see Jim and Miss Patti out walking their dogs. Well, I have to stop! Here are two of my favorite neighbors and I’ve never seen them hanging out together! They ask me why I’m not running with Sarah and Jim tells me that she got out yesterday and he had to put her back in our backyard for us. Bad Sarah! I’ll have to talk to Jordan about making sure the gate is closed when he takes out the garbage. We exchange pleasantries and I explain that I’m out for time this time so I’ll have to come back later and take Sarah for a walk when I’m done.
I turn on the iPod and realize that when I synched it to my laptop for the first time a few days ago, I lost all of my Playlists!!! So my Workout Playlist is gone forever, lost in cyberspace. Ah, well, I’d been meaning to update it anyway. So I search for a genre that will suffice and settle on Funk. Alright, so it’s up to George Clinton’s Atomic Dog to get my heart pumpin’ and my feet racin’. Here we go!
I thought this was going to be absolute torture, but it really wasn’t!! I kept my breathing smooth and maintained proper form because I knew that if it were race day, I’d be more likely to lean into that incline, just to get through it. It’s strange that I’ll allow myself bad form on race day when I’m such a stickler during training.
I finish mile one in 11:26 which doesn’t sound like much but that was just HUGE for me. More than a minute off my usual time! I was so excited! I’d never done that in training before and I was very happy with that!!!
I decided to keep it moving and continue to push myself for the rest of the run. During the sprint, my heart rate was at 186, which 102% for me. I decided to bring it down to 92% for the rest of the run, which is huffing it, but not uncomfortable for me. The rest of the run was pretty uneventful and I was happy to make it back home after my usual 3.65 miles.
My warm down consisted of my walking with Jordan to a neighbor’s house to introduce our dogs. They asked us to watch their pug, Lucy, over the weekend while they were away and I wanted to be sure they would get along.
The experiment was NOT successful, but we’ll keep at it and see if they can become firm friends.
That's great. It's always motivating to have proof that your training is working.
ReplyDeleteIf you've got the option to manually set your max heart rate, it's time to use it. Whenever your HRM tells you that you're over 100%, you've found your new max.
ReplyDelete@Frank - Thanks for the encouragement. It is great to blow past a plateau.
ReplyDelete@Lloyd - Yeah, you're right. Now I'll have to work harder simply because I know I can.