Catching Up

I had a very nice weekend out at Amy's grandparents. We just helped them out around the farm and relaxed. I haven't posted about my runs lately so to get caught up here is a summary of my last few runs.

Thursday - May 24th
I ran my second run with my HRM. I went 1.5 miles with the goal of keeping my heart rate under 149 (70% of my max according to the 220-age formula). My watch started beeping at me after just a few steps, I checked it and it said I was at 183. I knew there was know way that was right so I kept going, but it kept beeping. I stopped and walked and it went down to about 115 right away. But as soon as I started jogging again it jumped up to over 200, I just keep going and it kept going up. I think the highest it got to was 232. I walked for awhile again and it dropped pretty much right away. When I started jogging again it stayed about where I expected it to. The whole way back it was fine. The only thing I can think that it might have been is that my HRM didn't have a good connection, but once I started sweating a little the connection was better. Anyway, it was a lot easier for me to keep my heart rate under my target on the road than it was on the treadmill, well once it quit acting up anyway.

Friday - May 25th
No run, I just rode in the car for about 6 hours.

Saturday - May 26th
I ran a 2 mile fartlek on the country roads. I used the nifty interval feature on my watch. I ran easy for 3 minutes then hard for one. I'd say I went ran at about 90% for the hard parts. I couldn't quite to it for the whole minute for the last one though. The whole run took 18.22 and my heart rate averaged 163.

Sunday - May 26th
Repeat of Friday.

Yesterday - May 27th
We went out to Yanney park and did a 3.5 mile long run. I look forward to my long runs because it is really nice to run out there. It was an out and back run again. My target heart rate for the run was 149 again, I'm going to keep using that for the next few weeks for all my easy or long runs. On the way out I tried to keep my heart rate under 140 so I had a little room to work with on the way back. I did a pretty good job of that. I turned around in 19.17. My heart rate crept up on the way back but I only went over 149 twice for a total of 30 seconds. My final time was 40.09, or 11.29 per mile. It's hard for me to run that slow but as my aerobic base gets built (more on that later) my times will come down, or at least that's what I've read.

Today
I took the day off from work and I was pretty much just a bum all day but I plan on doing some yoga later tonight. My MP3 player came today and I went out picked up a new pair of headphones, a couple technical shirts and a pair of shorts (adding another $60 that I've wasted on stuff for running). I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out my plans after the races I have coming up in June. I think I got it all figured out today, but I'm going to leave you in suspense...