Summer Slowdown

Today's the first day of summer and time to slow things down as the temps are picking up in my area, and it is expected to hit close to 100 today. At least it's a dry heat. Yeah, right.

My consulting work has also slowed a bit too, but that has been compensated by doing more family stuff. Both my kids are out of school, which means trying to keep them busy and shuttling them around to camps and activites. Lots O' fun.

Regarding my running, I made sure this morning's run was truly a recovery effort. I used the Mizuno Revolvers without orthotics, and ran about 7.75 miles at a very slow 8:58 minutes per mile pace. I closely monitored my heartrate throughout the run and averaged 126 beats per minute for the hour+ effort.

This was about 59% of my max HR based on the heart rate reserve method. A little less than one third of the run was in the 60-70% zone and the rest was below 60%, which is right where I wanted it. This is the main reason why I upgraded to the Garmin Forerunner 305 to make sure I don't run the easy days too hard.

Although pace and heart rate wise, the run was easy, it really didn't feel like it. I know it sounds funny, but I'm just not use to running at that pace, and consciously had to force myself to slow it down, which is why I never felt really comfortable. I have to get use to this because I plan to run my recovery efforts this way from now on, although I might attach some strides at the end of some of them.

Lastly, I've never been much of a long-term planner when it came to my training. I sort of made things up as I went along on a daily or weekly basis, but basically I just put in the miles. This is why I purchased Pfitzinger's Advanced Marathoning book for its structured schedules in case I attempt a marathon in December.

I aslo decided to print out some blank Outlook calendars for the next few months so I can write down a proper training schedule. We'll see if this structure helps at all....

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