dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

I didn't feel great waking up this morning, but I felt better than I thought I would considering I ran longer and faster yesterday than I normally do.

I was very encouraged by this morning's run.  Today was the first day since early November that I have run and had a HR that was close enough to normal that I could not say anything was wrong.  HR was in the low 130's at 8:00 pace.  While that is still higher than it used to be it is just as likely that the increase at this point is due to a loss of fitness.  I was practicing getting in a lot of air while running again.  I am not sure if the improvement is due to the breathing, or something else.  I plan on checking pollen counts to see if anything has changed here recently (maybe in the last week or so).  Total of 4 miles in 30:47.

I ran 4 miles this morning.  I felt a little achy, but not too bad.  The HR was about the same as yesterday, but I was running a fair amount slower for the first half of the run.  Total time of 32:24.  I will try to up the daily mileage to 5 miles tomorrow morning as long as I feel alright.

I ran 5 miles this morning in 38:18.  My legs felt a little stiff and tight at the beginning, but that slowly went away.  I practiced my alternative forms of breathing again, trying to see if it really makes a difference.  The basic idea of my new breathing technique is that I shape my mouth like an "O" and try to open up the back of my throat like I am singing, with the hope that it will open up my airways.

Early on in the run the HR was 132 while running uphill at about 8:10 mile pace (probably worth about 7:50 on flat ground).  This was the first time that I have seen my HR this low while running uphill.  I didn't believe my count at first, so I counted the HR again for 20 seconds instead of 10 and got the same result (my HR monitor broke a few weeks ago, so now I just check the HR manually).  About midway through the run I checked the HR on a mild uphill segment of trail because I realized that I was no longer breathing the way I was at the beginning of the run, as I was focusing more on breathing deeply rather than opening up the airways.  My HR was 144 which tells me that what I am doing with the breathing really is what is fixing things, because the HR spiked when I did something different.  I noticed that my throat felt tight until I started trying to open the airways again, but once I started focusing on opening the airways, my HR dropped once more.  When running downhill I measured my HR as low as 126 on a few segments, but it generally stayed around 132 just like earlier as I was running a little faster.

As I was getting to the end of the run I decided to see if I could still maintain an open airway even when running fast, so I sped up for 1:35 and took the HR at about the 1:00 mark, and again right as I started to slow down.  I am not sure how fast I was running, but the HR at 1:00 was 162, and at the end it was just a tiny bit higher, maybe 165.  I will take it as a positive that the HR was under 170.  I finally am starting to feel like things are getting back to normal.  I think that I will run 5 miles again tomorrow to be sure that I am maintaining things without regressing before trying to increase the mileage further.

I ran 5 miles again this morning.  Things went well enough that I think I will run 6 miles tomorrow.  There was a strong headwind during the first half of the run, and when running at about the same pace that I was running at yesterday my HR was only slightly higher despite the wind.  Total time was 39:2x for 5 miles.

Shayon had a Dr. appointment early this morning, so I decided to get my run in later in the afternoon after work.  What I didn't count on was being busy working on my thesis until after 10pm.  I was glad I didn't run in the morning, because when I woke up my legs weren't feeling super great (not horrible, but they could have been better), but I needed to make time for my run in the afternoon and I am kind of kicking myself a bit for not getting it done.  I think that not having the humidifier running the last few nights may be what led to not feeling great in the morning.  It is hard to get enough rest if you can't breath well, and I think the humidifier helps.

The plan as of Thursday was to run 7 miles today, and I felt good enough to run the full distance.  The only problem was that I had limited time after Kimia got her run done because we had to go to a baptism.  So, instead of running less I just ran the mileage faster.  I ran the 7 miles in 40:49 (about 5:50 average), running the downhill second half in 19:59 (5:42 pace).  My legs felt very good at that pace, as I did not feel like it took much muscular effort to do so.  My problem is that I am out of shape (I have not even run a full mile in under 6:00 pace in over 2 months, and I ran all 7 that fast today), and I couldn't get my breathing under control for long periods of time.  It is much harder to keep my airways open and relaxed when I am working hard.  The end result was that I had to work pretty hard to run sub 6:00 pace, even though my legs did not feel stressed (other than feeling oxygen deprived).  It felt good to work a little harder, although I suspect that breathing hard may not be the best as I feel like my airways close off a bit more after I run hard, almost as if my throat is irritated and tightens up in protest.