I have mixed feelings about this. I mean, obviously it's nice to have extra time in case I need to repeat weeks and what not (and I probably will, what with me getting married in the middle of all of this). At the same time though, I thought I was so much closer to being able to run the half marathon! It's kind of like a kid looking forward to Christmas forever, and then being like "No Billy you idiot, Christmas is in December, not November. We shouldn't have dropped you on your head that one time." Le sigh.
My run today was...eh. Mondays are easy recovery runs in my program and they would like you to keep your heart rate at about 65-75% of your max. Figuring my max is 195 (based on that stupid 220-25 and the fact that I did my own "max heart rate test" by running as hard as possible, and only could get it up to 195) this would mean keeping my heart rate between 126-146 for the run. Today my heart rate when running was 155 (80% of my max). I was running 13 min/mile for a lot of it (although I did get up to as fast as 9:30 min/mile).
So I guess what I'm trying to say is...how the hell am I supposed to keep my heart rate that low? Honestly, when I'm walking (doing NO RUNNING) my heart rate is around 120.
To top it off, I felt like today was a large waste of time because the run felt so slow and so sluggish. I know its a recovery day. I know. But mentally I feel like I should be going harder. I feel like I can without doing any detriment to my body. I know I just have to trust that the people who wrote the program (that have ran dozens of marathons) know more than me...who has never ran in a half or full marathon yet.
The other way you can do this program is to use the I-Rate scale (on a scale of 1-10, how hard is it). I would have counted this day as a 5, tops. Using the I-Rate scale, today was supposed to be a 6.5-7.5. So what the hell should I go by? The HRM or the I-Rate scale?
I don't know. If anyone reads this, please let me know what you did if you were in a similar situation.
The run itself was pretty. I ran through that man made marsh that I mentioned yesterday, and it was pretty relaxing. Unfortunately, the loop I was talking about taking yesterday was WAY shorter than I had thought it would be- I thought it would be about 1 mile around it...and it was about 0.25 mile.
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This is a picture of where I ran today. If I would have turned to the right, you would have seen gas stations and a McDonalds. It's a marsh right in the middle of town...pretty cool!
Tomorrow is a 30 minute cross training day. I may do the stairs at Pine Mountain again. Not positive yet.
Here is my schedule for this week:
Monday: 30 min run
Tuesday: 30 min cross training
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 30 min run
Friday: 30 min cross training
Saturday: 4 mile run
Sunday: Rest
Wednesday's blog will be about the products I like to use for my running since it's a rest day.
My HR skyrockets with running too! I keep a really low resting HR of around 50-55, sometimes 45. But when I run, it gets up to 160s so easily, 175 even. usually I just scale back my speed, but if I can keep going at that intensity i do. It helps your body to condition to be able to handle higher intensities more efficiently, therefore your body will eventually have a lower HR with that intensity.
ReplyDeletegood luck with all your training!
That's good to hear that someone else has the same experience!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
My HR gets pretty high with running too. My resting HR runs around 65-70. But there are times during my runs that my HR will get up to almost 190. I think some people's bodies handle high intensity aerobic activity better than others. I try to go more by what my body is telling me than the HRM at times.
ReplyDelete