Saturday morning and it’s 8am at TriCycle and Run. Ready for run day… but apparently no one else is. Looks like it is going to be a lonely run. Sometimes it’s nice to run alone. No ipod and just the Garmin set at an alarm for 143 bmp (to stay in the MAF range). I felt like I wanted to try something new so I took off for a nice 1 hour run. The plan was to run from the shop, run back in to the Rio Vista development, and stay on the edge of the water, taking the most scenic run through town that I could. Turns out, you can do a VERY pretty run, at around a 11 minute pace that takes about an hour. Hmmm… sounds like a nice run to do for tourists on either Saturday or Sunday mornings prior to the 8 am run. We’ll see……  The breakdown for that run was:

1 mile   10:06
2 mile   10:11
3 mile   10:32
4 mile   11:06
5 mile   11:06

5.63 miles in 1 hour 1 minute

I can’t say I set the world on fire with the pace, but it felt great, and with an average HR of 141 bmp, right on target. I feel great!

And then I feel tired. Very very VERY tired Sunday morning. I burn through 4 alarms and still sleep until 930 in the morning. So much for the morning ride I was planning. A full day at the shop and then a short day at Oxford PD got me home around 10pm. Now I wouldn’t say that I felt guilty about missing my workout in the morning, but I felt like I NEEDED a workout. Fortunately, the Dorchester County YMCA had recently sold off some of their old equipment and I was fortunate enough to buy a Schwinn spinbike, which now resides on my back sunroom at my house. Makes for a great workout late at night so on the spin bike I go.

Nice and easy ride, light-medium resistance for 30 minutes with an average HR of 139. Quick and to the point but exactly what I needed. Ahhhhh

MONDAY
A check of my Heart Rate Variability showed a slight increase in my HRV so it’s kind of up to me if I want to work out or not. I spent all day on my feet, teaching a new reporting system to fellow law enforcement officers (sounds fun, huh?) so I’m ready to do SOMETHING by the end of the day. Fortunately I have a VERY supportive wife (LOVE YOU LAURA!!) and she lets me go to the shop to get a short run in, even though she’s been at the house with a sick child all day.

I get down to the shop around 6 pm and start walking on the treadmill at 3mph for about 5 minutes to try and get warmed up. I think that I’ve been going too fast in to the workout so I’m going to try and get at least a short warm up and cooldown between workouts. Nice run and, with the Garmin Footpod, I’m able to watch my pace and distance on my 910XT too. Very nice for recording data. The breakdown is:

1 mile   9:49
2 mile   9:07
3 mile  9:04
4 mile  9:20

4.78 miles in 45 minutes

For those of you VERY detail oriented, like me….. this is what I did to go without going over 143bpm

0-2 minutes  @ 5mph
2-4 minutes  @ 5.5 mph
4-14 minutes @ 6 mph
14-22 minutes @ 6.2mph
22-27 minutes @ 6.1mph
27-37 minutes @ 6 mph
37-41 minutes @5.9mph
41-42 minutes @5.7mph   Can‘t seem to get my heart rate to drop below 143! Stuck at 145!!!
42-43 minutes @5.5mph   STILL CAN’T!!!
43-45 minutes @5.3mph    Finally!!! I have to keep a close eye on that for future runs. No matter
                    how fast I dropped my speed, I couldn’t get the HR to drop. It was actually climbing.