How am I feeling today?
Tired of the heat/humidity, but I am not shoveling it, so it is still a plus and I won’t complain too much. It was 75*F on Bennie’s first walk, and I got my Prehab work done right away. In other words, a pretty good morning so far. The body doesn’t seem to have any new aches or pains, which is good sign after working on stretching out my stride a little during yesterday’s workout. Although I am not looking forward to mowing, if it doesn’t rain, the lawn is beginning to look like a hay field.
Planned Workout Description:
Type: 40:00 minute – Easy Run
Today’s Running Focus:
- Enjoy the run
Purpose:
Easy runs are an important part of balancing training intensity and recovery. Your target for this run is 75-80% of your Stryd Auto-Calculated Critical Power. You are encouraged to start out at the lower end of your prescribed range and progress to near the top of your prescribed range by the end of the run. While going above your prescribed range might feel easy in the moment, it is important to remember the purpose of an easy run is to promote recovery without adding additional fatigue.
What I Actually Did Today:
I did the Wildwood O/B at an easy pace. I wasn’t in a hurry and worked more on how I was running until one of the residents on Tiffany wanted me to stop and talk for a bit. Oh well, I can’t complain he has been pretty good about things since his dog came at me a couple of years ago and he commiserated with me, when I was injured and walking by his house earlier this year. Just part of the deal when you run out in rural areas and the “neighbors” want to gab for a couple minutes. It doesn’t hurt at all to be neighborly, and you never know when that quick little stop to talk is going to come back to you in a good way.
Did that workout go as planned?
I figured with the temps in the ‘80s and humidity over 70% that going out slow and coming back even slower would be the order of the day and it was. Once I stopped and talked with the neighbor, I kind of lost my mojo, but wasn’t really all that concerned about it. I kept running up to the top of the upper gate and then decided that I needed to walk up to the VW. Coming up Stevens Hill, I could feel the heart rate getting a bit higher and while it wasn’t anything extreme, with the conditions I just decided to saunter along for a little way. Once I got to the VW, I started running again, but even slower than I had been. At that point I looked like I had gone swimming and the body just wanted this run over with.
I did good and stopped when the watch hit 40:00 minutes. I am finding that running by time versus running by mileage/pace is a little easier to do what is on the plan. I don’t feel that urge to keep up a certain pace on days like this, because I know that I even if I run faster, I still have that number of minutes to do, so an easy run tends to stay easy. Instead of a mileage run where if I can run faster, I get it over with faster and thus set myself up to run too fast, especially on easy days or crappy days when you just want the run over and done with. To be honest I am starting to like the training by time method more as I use it more.
Injuries/Niggles: My left Achilles was a bit achy this morning during the run, which I believe has something to do with the longer stretches that I attempted yesterday. It seems that when I do the longer Achilles stretch off the ladder that the next couple of days it is sorer in the lower Achilles. Although the mid-Achilles did bother a little on the way back from Wildwood.
Weather: Clear sky, 84°F, Feels like 92°F, Humidity 74%, Wind 6mph from SSW. Yes, that is what it felt like to me.
Shoes: Reebok Forever Energy 2 – No issues, just felt comfortable and didn’t get in the way.
Other Stuff
The big thunderstorm went around us and I still had to go out and water the garden after it passed by, otherwise just a lot of reading and keeping cool going on around here.
Harold's Blog 