Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Hamburger Empire Strikes Back

Yesterday was a good day of workouts. I had a 3 - 5 mile easy run on the schedule so I hit the pathway around the river over lunch for it. I'd already decided I was going for 5 miles. The wind was pretty crazy, but the sunshine was nice. Here are the details:
  • Mile 1: 9:43
  • Mile 2: 9:54 (in to some serious wind)
  • Mile 3: 9:30
  • Mile 4: 9:24
  • Mile 5: 9:22

Not too badly played out, eh? I find running and semi-paying attention to my heart rate is an interesting thing. I'm running faster than I used to, and my heart rate is telling me it is easy. Sometimes you mentally wonder if you should pull back, but the heart rate tells you that you can keep it up. So I ran 5 miles at a pace that I used to consider race pace, it felt like I could have kept going, and I never felt the urge to stop and walk once.

I also got in a swim last night. I needed to get in to work early today so that made going to my swim clinic a near impossibility. I met up with a friend for dinner, but when we were finished by 7:30 I started thinking that I didn't need to bail on swimming altogether, but that I could go at night instead. I had a burger for dinner...which in hindsight if I would have thought about swimming after dinner I would have not had that burger... But I went home, let it digest for a bit, then showed up at the Y at 8:45. There were only two lanes set up, one slow and one med/fast. The slow lane had a couple of people lolly gagging around in it and the medium lane had a few breaststrokers in it. Once I settled in it wound up being myself, another front crawler and one breaststroker. I had to pass the breaststroker more than a few times and in an attempt to avoid a head on collision with the front crawler I got a few moments of sprinting in. I didn't want to do a workout, I just wanted to swim 2000 m to see how it felt and how fast I was. How fast? Well, I am a bit faster than when I was swimming straight laps back in July and August. And endurance-wise I was able to swim the 2000 m with no problems other than just swimming back and forth is kind of boring. But otherwise how did it feel? Ugh, I kept burping burger... My friend asked is I had a hamburger empire strikes back moment at the strainer...which thankfully...no... But note to self - burgers and swimming are a bad combination!

9 comments:

Scott said...

Good job with your progress! It's a great feeling to go out there for an "easy" run at a pace that used to be difficult..just shows that you are doing the right things!

Keep up the great work

Marlene said...

Nice job squeezing in the swim instead of skipping it altogether.

My tummy is bubbling just thinking about the burger and then swimming!

I don't know how you swimmers swim back and forth in the pool for so long...

Rainmaker said...

Nicely done. It's interesting how training with a HRM slower can actually make you faster - funny, huh?

teacherwoman said...

Way to switch around your workouts to get them in! Nice work on the 5 miler fo sho!

Run Mommy said...

Your workout updates are so inspiring!

Sonia said...

Burger and any sort of physical activity are a bad idea LOL


Good job on the 5 miler! You are speedy girl!

RoadBunner said...

Great pace on your run!

Brooke said...

Ugh..I hate when a bad eating choice comes back to haunt you during exercise...ironically I find beer isn't in that category ;)

Viv said...

You are going to get so much more awesomer than you are already. Triathlon training is so much about working the HR Zones..Fantastic on getting VO2 max tested,so jealous!