Lunch - back on the treadmill again. I talked with my brother-in-law this weekend about interval training and decided to tackle it a bit differently. Make the easy portion very easy, make the hard portion harder, which also helps the heart to learn when to work hard and when to rest (comparatively speaking). So I ran the easy portions at 6.5 mph, and the hard portions at 10 mph. I did 2 minutes slow, then 1 minute fast for 36 minutes, then finished with 2 minutes slow and 2 minutes fast. I wore my HR monitor chest strap today, and it was interesting to see the difference in HR between the easy and hard portions. Given my (still) lack of aerobic fitness, I would expect the difference to increase as my fitness improves. Average HR during the easy portions was about 150, average HR during the hard portions was around 175, although during the last interval, my HR spiked to 188. This is pretty typical for me - my exercise HR has always been higher than "average", and I don't worry about it. In any case, I didn't feel any differently when my HR was that high. However, it will be interesting to see both those numbers drop down as my fitness increases. Total of approx. 5.25 miles. | 