Bret

AM - 5 miles on the treadmill to keep it flat and more in recovery effort but with the HRR at 65-70%.  

AM - Workout - 3 x mile with a 2 min rest - 1.5 mile warm up and about a mile or so cool down.  Did these right at threshold and averaged around 7:10 at the High School.  The first two were entirely in the route we run around the perimeter of the parking lots for the middle school and high school which is almost exactly 1 mile - and pretty flat.  I did part of the last one around the middle school track. It was a good effort - 7:06, 7:14 and 7:13.  Challenging to stay in that sub threshold/threshold zone, I had my Garmin with an alarm at 161 HR (threshold is likely 162 or 163) which would alert me to not to press too much more and ease a little bit, so I was pleased that I did not blowup and was able to maintain.  The first one was probably too aggressive but my HR was not pushed for the first half of that one either.  By the time I was tired - the HR was already up on the second and third reps.  

Couple of observations - Threshold HR for me has been mostly the same for at least the last 13 years or more. I would have thought it would have gone down.   Second observation - my threshold pace although probably age-appropriate is significantly slower than it was 13 years ago - by probably 45 second per mile.  Third observation - I still like doing these workouts.  They challenge me and I feel good that I can still do them.  

AM - decided to sign up for a half marathon in December with some friends from church.   Laid out my plans/goals to Chat GPT and we collaborated on a training cycle.  I am kind of excited about this experiment.  Today was day 1 - in which the workout was just 5 miles easy - but using HRR to guide the effort in Zone 2 - between 133 to 143 or 65-73% HRR.  Coincidentally the weather provided a brief respite from the heat and humidity of mid 70's with high dew points in the same range with a pleasant-almost chilly feeling 66 degrees with a dew point of only 54.  The more focused but easy effort resulted in a decent pace per mile in the neighborhood today of around 8:30 per mile and an average HR of 133.   Tomorrow is a workout 3 x 1 mile - which I am debating on whether to do indoors or to go to the Milton HS track or parking lot perimeter for some flat running space. 

AM - 5 miles for a Sunday-morning-only route out Freemanville to Birmingham; traffic is nearly non-existent early in the morning without work/commuter traffic.  Always get a little meloncholy when I pass by the vet's office where we used to take Finn.