Thursday, August 21, 2008

Almost Cacked

Tough workout on the hills today; almost cacked several times.  I last ran hills on August 6. Here's a comparison between the two sessions:
August 6/ August 21:    Distance 5.6 miles/ 6.4 miles, Av. Pace 9:28 mm/ 10:18 mm, Av. Heart 146 bpm/ 155 bpm, Max Heart 169 bpm/ 179 bpm.
What gives?  Normally my heart recovers to about 145 bpm on the down side and max's out at about 170 bpm on the upside.  I've been running the same hills for several years so I knew something was amiss today.  I felt horrible.  It was all I could do not to walk it in and call it a day.  I had to walk several times just to bring the heart down to a semi-comfortable level and came in on a wing and a prayer.  Yuck!  What happened?
Here's my theory... in three part harmony:
1)  The heat, humidity and wind were intense.  I purposely chose the hottest part of the day to run hills to acclimatize myself to the heat (I hear Minneapolis can be brutally hot in October).  Maybe this wasn't so smart after all.  Running downhill full force into the wind didn't help elevate the spirits.
2) Coming off nine days of forced rest didn't help matter either.  I think I lost some endurance (how quickly it goes... scary).
3)  We celebrated our 25th last night with a very nice bottle of wine from Vancouver Island.  One fishbowl of wine... good, two fishbowls... bad.  Hmm, maybe this was the biggest factor.
Oh well, tomorrow's another day.
Later, M

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it was the fishbowl of wine. 9 days of r&r would be good for anyone. Looks and sounds like the kayaking trip was excellent. Running on a deserted sandy beach sounds pretty peaceful, gives the mind alot of time to think.
Good luck in Minneapolis, I'm sure you will do sub 4, providing the calf hold up.

Anonymous said...

P.S. Where are your 10 reasons for running, you seem to have missed a couple of weeks!!!!!!!!!

Jen said...

I'm sure next week you'll be back to normal. I'd chock it up to just one of those days. It's so cool how you can compare your workouts. I need to learn to use my watch better. And it is scary how fast the endurance leaves! It's just not fair!