More than I thought

Today I went for my Saturday run, since the run on Saturday went splat.  I brought my heart rate monitor and my Forerunner.  I wanted to see how my heart rate was on these runs to get a feeling for my baseline, and I really had no recollection of how far two laps around the park was.

The trail had a nice base of snow, about 6 inches to a foot (the giant blizzard is in western NY).  It was easy to run on the packed areas, especially where the skiers had been going.  I should have worn sunglasses though because by the end my eyes were getting kind of dazed from the shine off the snow when I went through fields.

My heart rate went from about 165 once I got going, and progressed slowly up to around 180 by the time I finished.  When it hit 180 I backed off to bring it back down in the 170’s.  Normally, when I do cardio on the machines, I think it hangs around 150 or so.  I can really feel it at 180.  That’s when I feel like I’m dragging and my form seriously begins to slip.  In the snow that means extra sideways sliding.

When I stopped I watched my HR drop rapidly down in the first minute to 150, and then down to 120 by the time I walked back to the truck.  Two bananas and some gatorade and I was feeling tired but good.  So confirmed that my heart rate can be up there near a max and not make me feel like I did yesterday.  Maybe I’m straining my system in some other way.

It turns out that two loops around the park is about 4 miles, where I thought it was about 3.  Which is good because it means my mileage is better than I had previously thought.  Forerunner says it was about 39 minutes, which is also good because I’m happy with 10 minute miles on the trail in the snow, also better than I had expected.

Next weekend I’m going to wear the HR monitor while doing weights and see what my heart is doing while I lift.  Maybe its spiking up high and then dropping down and stopping to measure it I don’t see the change.  Hmmm.

Hope you all are having a good weekend.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.