On yesterday’s recovery run home I was draggin’ my butt after Monday’s long run. I cheated myself out of six minutes:
Time: 1:23:50
Distance: 9.1 miles
Pace: 9:10 minutes per mile
Average Heart Rate: 149 bpm
Today’s “hard” effort was a bit on the sluggish side:
Time: 58:45
Distance: 7.31 miles
Pace: 8:05 minutes per mile
Average Heart Rate: 167 bpm
Too tired to say anything more. 
Time: 2:29
Distance: 16.4 miles
Pace: 9:05 minutes per mile
Average Heart Rate: 159
Last week’s long run was absolutely brutal (no energy). The week before, hindsight tells me I pushed the pace a bit too much (8:52 min/mile). Today was just right. I am depleted but not completely exhausted. I think it will set me up well for the rest of the week.
In other news, I submitted the following video clip to the posetech forum. I got really excellent encouragement from some of the gurus (Jack is King there). Historically, I’ve been nervous about posting video there because the coaches can be perfectionists whose detailed comments can sometimes be a bit overwhelming. That said, the coaches there are really excellent and have the best of intentions – to help you achieve good Pose Method running form.
It turns out that today my nervousness was not warranted – all I got was positive praise. I am relieved. Before I posted the video, I thought my form was looking and feeling good but, I was not certain of it. Now I am. That’s a good feeling for someone who’s spent the better part of two years at this!
So, for those of you who are interested, here is a link to a full-sized video of me Pose Method running (QuickTime mov format). In case you don’t have QuickTime, I’ve also embedded a smaller, more universally viewable Google Video version below.
After yesterday’s run, I had a feeling I’d be bettering my “hard” run pace as well. Only question seemed to be, “by how much?” Turns out, by about 20 seconds a mile.
Time: 1:01:45
Distance: 8.01 miles
Pace: 7:43 minutes per mile
Average Heart Rate: 169
This was an awesome run. In addition to the 20 second per mile improvement, it was awesome because:
1. It felt really good running at that pace and heart rate.
2. 7:45 minutes per mile was the pace I ran in my PR 1/2 marathon. Do I think I could have sustained today’s pace for another five miles? Yup.
3. Give me another month and I’m pretty confident I’ll be running these 60 minute hard runs at 7:30 minutes per mile.
And it was easy.
Time: 1:27:30
Distance: 10.48 miles
Pace: 8:21 minutes per mile
Average Heart Rate: 161 bpm (that’s the bottom end of my easy target heart rate zone)
8:21 was a difficult hard one hour pace for me only a few weeks ago.
Lydiard continues to rock my world.
