It's over, man. Let her go.

No miles for me today, but I have to give a shout out to my younger brother who finished his first 1/2 Ironman!  He's been training for a while now, has run a few Marathons, but picked up the swimming and biking in the last 6 months or so.

He did the Florida 1/2 Ironman near Disney World.  The race consisted of a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile run.  He finished in 6:13:00 - about 1000th out of 2500.  Better than he had anticipated!

Way to go, Bro!!

Walked 3mi to/from work.

It has been pouring for 2 days now so after getting soaked walking in to work, I decided that it was a TM day.  I warmed up doing intervals 2min @ 6.5mph then 2min@ 7.5mph.  Did this for 20 mins (about 2mi) then did a fast mile @ about 7:15 pace, slowed to about 10:00 pace for about .25mi then did another fast mile @ about 7:15 pace again, then slowed to walking to cool down.  Stretched, showered, then back to work.

Walked 3mi to/from work

Today, procrastination worked to my benefit again.  It was pouring as I walked to work this morning but by the time 5pm rolled around, I still hadn't gotten to the gym yet, so I headed down.  The rain had stopped so I ran outside at a nice comfortable pace.  My gait felt uncomfortable/awkward - not sure what's up with that.  I felt like I was just learning to run again.  Guess that's what a week or so off of running will do to you.  Curse you, work!

Beautiful running weather:  overcast and about 54 degrees.   Just ran a comfortable pace around downtown, Garmin on but just showing time of day, HR and distance.  Traffic was bad so I headed to the square near work that's exactly a mile around on the inner loop.  No traffic to worry about since I don't cross any streets so I was able to just cruise and enjoy the run. Ended up running about an 8:20 pace which surprised me.  Thought it was closer to 9:00.  HR was 156-159 most of the time.  Once I get into the 160s, that's when I feel like I'm really working and would have a hard time maintaining that for a long distance.  When I hit 170-172 (highest I've seen yet) is when I'm hitting my limit.  Supposedly, my max HR is 180...not sure I'll ever get there. If I do, I predict my RoadID will pay for itself.  lol

Worked from home today, so I didn't get my walk in and I'm not sure I'll get my run in since I've got scouts n'at tonight.  I had someone tell me about this blog a long time ago, but I never checked it out.  They said it was hilarious.  I read a few entries and I have to say, I'm wondering if it's Burt or maybe his wife.  Anyways, if you can overlook the spelling and grammatical errors, it is quite funny.  It's an LDS lady from what I understand, so I'm probably the last guy on earth to hear about it considering how fast things move through the LDS grapevine, but I'll post it anyways.

Wife has her graduation parties today around 2pm so I had to get my work in early.  I'll try and run this afternoon, but figured I'd share something that just dawned on me the other day.  I'm sure it's obvious to everyone else, but I'm slow (in more ways than one  lol).  I just realized that pace vs speed is not linear!  For instance, to go from a 15:00 pace to a 14:00 pace is only a 0.27 MPH increase, but to go from a 5:00 pace to a 4:00 pace is 3.0 MPH!  That's good for us slow people since it gives us lots of encouragement since it doesn't take much to drop our pace times.

I never realized the significance of a 5 second PR at the elite level, nor the difference between times in a race.  For instance, the difference between a 4:30 (10:17 pace =  5.83 MPH) and a 4:20 (9:54 pace =  6.06 MPH) marathon time is completely different from a 2:30 (5:43 pace = 10.5 MPH ) to a 2:20 (5:20 pace = 11.25 MPH) time.  Still a 10 min improvement, but at the elite level, you've got to run .75 MPH faster to get that 10 mins vs .22 MPH for the slower time. Hopefully my math is right so I don't look like a fool.  :-)

So for us mid to back of the pack runners, getting PRs is "easier" than at the elite level.  I know it's all relative, and a PR is a PR, but it takes more and more strength, endurance, etc. to keep getting those PRs as we get faster.  Never really thought much about that until I was on the TM the other day and watching the pace as I increased the speed.  At first, the pace went down quickly, then I got smaller and smaller pace decreases as the speed increased.  LOL  I'm such a nerd, but didn't realize that until recently.

For us visual learners, here's a graph for ya:

If I don't get my run in today due to other obligations, at least I contributed to the value of the blog.  Unless this is common knowledge, then I just contributed.

Update: I got my run in tonight!  Yeaaa!  I had planned to go to the track and do 3 x 2mi repeats at about 10k pace.  I only had time to get in a warm up mile, two 2mi repeats, and a cool down mile with a 0.2mi walk (to finish off my 10k)  :-).  Warm up mile was faster than I had planned, went right into the first 2mi repeat, focusing on about a 8:10 mile for each, slow jog until my HR was down to about 130 (paused the Garmin), then started my next repeat.  Final lap was fine but pushed it the last lap to get my time lower.

Splits:  8:13, 8:04, 7:54, very slow jog for 300m, 8:02, 8:06, 8:11

The track was totally busy when I first got there.  Can I just say how glad I am that I have a Garmin?  I was able to run in lane 5, 6 and not have to worry about how to convert the lap in those lanes to an actual distance.  I just run in whatever lane until my watch beeps letting me know the mile is up.  Love it!!

I was reading a running book and it talked about assessing your current level of fitness/raceability.  The idea behind it is to do an assessment every 4 weeks or so.  You take your current HM pace, run 20-30 min at that pace after a thorough warm up, and note your HR for that pace at that time.  The idea is that over a 3-4 week period, with consistent training, you should be able to run at the same HR but at a faster speed.  I understand this to be HR based training, but the twist on this is that you only do this once a month or even every 6 weeks.  The rest of the training time is spent at certain paces.  So, you don't base your workouts on HR, just in the assessment.  So, I should be able to take my results from today and in 4-6 weeks, do another assessment and have it show me running at the same HR, but at a faster pace.  This way, I know my body is becoming more fit, etc. 

So, I went to the track today, warmed up for about .5 mi, then ran for about 20 mins, targeting 9:15 or so for my pace.  I was faster than I probably should have been (avg 8:55 pace).  My HR was 157 for the first mile, and 159 for the second, averaging 158.  So, it looks like the high 150s is where I'm at with my HR at my HM pace.  So, that's what I'll need to run at in a month or so when I do another assessment.  My understanding is that when I do the assessments from now on, I use that 158 HR average and then just run for 20-30 mins at that HR and then check the pace and it should be faster, showing an improvement.

I know Flat records his HR (usually just "low," not the actual numbers), but I wasn't sure if anyone else trains by HR.  I don't plan to, but this assessment was an interesting exercise.  Here's why:

The day before, I did run fairly hard, but I was surprised my HR was so high for this run at that pace and that my body felt to fatigued after just 2-3 miles at that pace.  I know my stride length shortened, but I kept a pretty high cadence.  The run started out feeling "awkward" again, but after a mile or so, I was feeling my stride again.  Keeping the pace slower was hard since my body wanted to go faster, but I kept holding it back.  I know it wants to go faster, but I don't think I can hold a 8:00 or better at HM distance, so I am trying to keep my body from running faster in my runs and focusing on keeping a consistent pace through longer runs.

I'm guessing my HR was a little elevated due to the run the day before.  Is this possible?  I know I was more fatigued, but would my HR be high(er) due to a harder run the day before?  Also, after last week's 3 miles, anything I did this week was going to be a lot higher than last week, so I shouldn't be too surprised that I'm tiring easier, I suppose.

I had hoped to get up early this morning and go running since we were supposed to do a yard sale with another family that's moving at 9am, but it was forecasted to rain so I decided to hold off. Plus, I'd have plenty to do this morning if we did do the yard sale.  The other family ended up doing it, but we decided against it.  We went over to hang out and help them...until it started down pouring!  It was just sprinkling until about 11am.  Since a lot of the stuff we were looking to sell wouldn't be very happy being in the rain, we're glad we didn't make the effort to drag all the stuff over.  I did discover the Lincoln Bakery just up the street from me, so I'm so excited!  It's a local little bakery here, family owned and run.  It's amazing they make sooo many breads, pastries, etc.  I'll never go to Dunkin Donut for donuts again! YUMMY!

So we went home and looking at the weather, procrastination wasn't going to help me, so I decided to head out about 1:30pm, planning to do about 8miles.  It was drizzling when I left, but around 68F, so it was fairly warm...and HUMID!  As I was leaving the house, I thought there was something I was forgetting.  Couldn't think what it was, and even as I passed mile 2 when it was down pouring again, nope, no clue.  About mile 3, I started remembering what it was.  I started getting this twinge of pain on my chest and it dawned on me what it was I forgot...vaseline!  I haven't had to worry about it for a while since it hasn't been raining or cold.  I turned around at 3.5mi and by the time I got home, I was in pain and everyone that saw me could plainly see on my white tech shirt.  Dang!  That's going to take a few days to heal.

This has happened to me a couple of times now over the couple of years of my running career.  I carry the vaseline in my gym bag so I always have it, but don't usually put it on unless I know I need to.  I couldn't remember the alignment of stars that necessitated me putting it on.  I haven't worn it for quite a while, even when it was really cold out, so I didn't think about it.  Now that I've been reminded again, I need to remember!  It always happens on the long runs when I'm doing an out and back where I'm not close enough to just turn around and cut a bunch of time/distance off my run, but still a long ways from home.  I did cut it short and turned around at 3.5mi.

Splits (HR):  8:21 (152), 7:12 (155) (partly downhill), 8:37 (155), 8:58 (151), 9:26 (146), 10:43 (148), 9:47 (149).

So, this is interesting that my average HR for each mile were all below my HM HR from yesterday, but the paces are all faster.  I think that means that I'm more efficient at this faster pace.  I dunno...

Off to go apply bandaids...  :-(