Getting back to Boston

Six this evening on the track at MAFC. Probably ran it a little faster than I should have; getting passed by a young woman who seemed to be running about 7:30 pace, a mile at a time, got me wound up. Oh well. HR was consequently higher than I had planned, but overall an OK run.

Getting the feeling that some people I had considered online friends aren't reciprocating. Oh well. They might not think so, but it's their loss. Not entirely surprised by this revelation either; I'd detected just a whiff of narcissism. OK, a lot more than a whiff. 

Kept the heart rate under better control this time. Averaged 127 on a 9:45 pace for 6.25, just a smidge over an hour. It's gonna be kind of a pain to wear the monitor strap so much, but maybe it will keep my training more focused. Tomorrow, an hour and a half, which will likely be 9ish.

Well, that was interesting. I decided I needed to do a HRmax test to pin down my training heart rates for Hadd, since I hadn't done a test in three years-plus. Fair enough. Jogged over to SHS, then did some strides. Hadd's recommendation was to do an all-out 800, rest two minutes, then do an all-out 400, and the closing HR at the end of the 400 should be just about your max. Faie enough. Did all that. My time for the 800 was 3:16, max HR 165. Rest two minutes, take off on the 400. It was as all-out as these old, tired legs can manage right now. Time: 90 seconds. Max HR: 164.

I'm going to presume that dead legs were my limiting factor, not my heart rate. Do the old equations, my HR should be about 172. And that's about what I got three years ago when I did a hill test on the dreadmill. So I'm gonna presume it hasn't changed that much, and will still be in the ~170 range, and base my training paces off that.

Then I ran home, the long way, and mostly in the rain. The rain didn't bother me. Being tired did. And I couldn't go slow enough to keep the HR below 130, especially on the uphills, where it was more like 140. Total for the afternoon, 8.7. A good day's work, and hopefully I worked up a few more mitochondria along the way along with finding out a ballpark number for HRmax.

 Now for tonight's date. Hmm. Not gonna say too much about that. Yet. 

Went to Marvin for a late run. Discovered I'd pulled a muscle in my back, which did not make running any easier. HR did not want to stay in the zone, no matter how slow I went (sore back probably didn't help). Ended up at barely under a 10:00 average, 135 AHR.