Today I ran considerably slower than I normally do. Somewhere around a 10 1/2 minute mile pace to an 11 minute mile pace. The reason you might ask? To put my heart back into it. About a year ago I wrote an article about heart rate training and the pro’s and con’s of heart training(there aren’t any real con’s).

This winter since I’ve started training for a spring marathon I’ve been doing all of my training indoors on a treadmill. I’ve monitored my heart rate but not actually allowed it to dictate my pace. The thing about heart rate training is - it will tell you what you’re really doing to yourself. You may feel fine but if a part of your body is sucking more blood or oxygen because of an injury or something - your heart rate will tell you. That’s what I did today. I made my time for running and was stronger at the finish even though the distance was greater.

Interesting story. Last year had a co-worker get a heart rate monitor. He put it on and started to watch what he was doing. What he couldn’t understand was that his heart rate was so high when he seemed to be running really slow. So he ignored it. Ran at a rate that was well above a training rate all the time. Needless to say he injured himself. Heart rate training was an interest of mine as well so I decided to get one and got a book about it at the same time. After reading the book it became very apparent what the problem with his training schedule was. I loaned him the book and suggested just trying to follow a heart rate directed training program. I’m not a doctor so I was going off of the book and articles on the web about it.

He followed a heart rate program for 6 months this year. No injuries so far and his actual pace is in line with what he was running before. The difference is that he allowed his heart to follow pace with his body. For a lot of people they can train consistently in a state where they are outside of their “training” rate. I can’t say the long term effects of that type of training but I don’t want to be the one to find out.

Ran 2.25 miles today - barely. Today called for a .75 mile at goal pace - .75 mile at temp pace - .75 mile at goal pace. I barely made it through the first leg before my heart felt like it was going to explode. I looked down and it was at 185bps. If you don’t know, that’s pretty high. My max heart rate is 192bps per my official stress test.

I slowed down until my bps was down to “level 3″ then went faster for as long as I could hold it. I finished the day like this. I don’t know if it was the new playlist on my ipod, or I was just overly tired and under nourished for the run. But it did give me pause to think about the running. It’s hard to do heart rate training on a treadmill. So I am going to do the track tomorrow and see how that goes. It’s short so we’ll see what comes of it. The difficult thing there is you have to keep track of the number of laps.

For those of you that don’t know I’m a natural pessimist. But I have a streak of optimism that pushes me to endure more with the hope that it will get better.

As part of my xtraining day, I swam today. I set out with the goal of swimming 20 laps but only completed 12. I started with 1 lap, 30 second break. 2 laps, 1 minute break. 3 laps, 1.5 minute break. 4 laps, 2 minute break. 3 laps, then died. I was so wiped out. My heart even after a 1.5 minute break was just pounding and I had that sickly feeling like after you’ve just sprinted, but believe me, I wasn’t sprinting.

I think the biggest challenge with swimming is I have no idea how or what to do or how much is too much. There’s a master’s swimming group I may talk to. Or better yet see if the gym has one.

Ran over 4 miles today. It was my first 4+ run in a couple of months. Not quite what I had planned but I didn’t feel quite up to it. I went mid-morning and that different than what I am used to.

I’m putting together different music lists. If anyone has any that they have by all means please include them.

Overview
Race date: December 17, 2005
Race start: 8:30 AM
Location: Life Time Fitness Columbus
Easton Town Center
3900 Easton Station
Columbus, OH 43219 (Map)
Costume contest: 9:45 AM

Registration
Advanced registration: $18 (postmarked by December 10, 2005)
Race day registration: $22 (December 11, 2005 - race day)
Discounts: $16 for Life Time Fitness members who register by December 10, 2005