Looking at HR

Gotten all my runs in for this week as planned. Thought I would document some HR stuff.

Tuesday: Did a little over 10 miles with 5 miles at LT pace. Averaged 7:04 pace for the LT portion. Did them around the track. It was about 20C in the morning to start and it was a struggle to roll out of bed in the morning to get this done. I'm sort of disappointed with the pace on this. I had thought I would be able to maintain this consistently below 7 min/mile especially on a flat track, but I think the relatively warm weather kept me from being able to hold the right pace. The effort felt harder than the 5 mile LT run I did last week on a non-flat route yet the pace was slower. The HR stayed below 180 which is where I like to keep it for LT runs, but don't like that the HR was constantly increasing throughout the LT portion. I normally like when it reaches 180 and then stays there for the entire run as it basically means that it's sustainable. Now it could just be that 5 miles was too short to see the plateau effect and the warmish weather may have contributed to it cause I was sweating buckets towards the end so who really knows.

Wednesday: Did 4.1 mile recovery run at 8:52 pace. It was relatively cool for this run at less than 15C. HR for recovery runs I've always tried to keep below 150 and a pace of no faster than 9 min/miles. I had no trouble keeping below 150 and it was lower than 140 at times. Pace however was 8:37 which is a bit too fast. If it wasn't for the slow first mile done at 9:26 pace, the average pace would have been much faster. I was comparing this to the HR during the Ottawa marathon where I was doing 8:45 pace but my HR was in the high 160's. I am in much better shape than I was back then.

Thursday: Could not force myself out of bed in the morning so ended up doing my 11 mile run after work, but wasn't feeling the greatest. I had eaten two lunches today. Lately, I'm famished come lunch time and ended up eating at noon, only to find out that some of the co-workers were taking a visitor out to lunch at 12:30. Not wanting to be anti-social I joined them with the intent of only nibbling on some of the Chinese food they were ordering, but I ended up having an entire second lunch. Needless to say, I was super stuffed this afternoon and my system had not quite processed it by the time of the run so I carried the bloated feeling for most of the run. First three quarters weres done slow and picked up the pace for the last quarter. Two interesting things to note are that HR was higher though pace was slower for the first three miles then the recovery I did yesterday (it was the same three mile route). Probably due to it being warmer and me being heavier. Second, based on the data from the end of the run, I think I can maintain a sub 8 min/mile at a HR of less than 160 though I"m not entirely sure cause I didn't wear the garmin today. Will have to test out this theory on Saturday.

I've been kinda wondering what my resting HR is these days. Last year when I got my wisdom teeth pulled, the nurse said it was 37. This was just after what I would guess was my peak fitness point. A couple of years ago, I wore my HR monitor to bed and it was 45 (i know I'm weird). I'm going to try wearing it to bed tomorrow to see what it is. I'm guessing probably around 40.