Training for a Belt Buckle

I was wide awake before my alarm went off at 5 and headed out the door for a run. So - following Allie's plan - I did 5 miles at 5.

I am going to blog more about this in my Adventures in Running blog, but have been working on heart rate training the past couple of months.  I quit using my Garmin except on long runs (I know all the distances around my house) because I was feeling like a slug when I ran. Trying to keep my heart rate between 75-80% on daily runs and 65-76% on long runs was making me so slow that it depressed me to see my speed.  As a matter of fact, on Saturday I was running some 16 minute miles.  I just felt so out of shape and couldn't run slow enough to keep my heart rate in teh proper range.

Saturday made me start to suspect that it might be the heart rate monitor's fault and not mine.  I have been using the cheapest Polar that I had bought a year ago and decided to read the book on the new, expensive Polar that my son and ex-husband bought me for Christmas.  Using the new monitor this morning, I actually was able to run and had to push a little to get into the range.  Last week I was running 5 miles on about 67 minutes, today I was back to somewhere under 1 hour and probably closer to 57 minutes.  That is a big difference.

I had big plans to work out a lot today - but plans tend to change.  I worked 16 hours yesterday and finally feel asleep around 12:30 this morning and got back up at 6 to head into work. I finished work on a project a couple of hours later and my boss sent me home at 8:30 to get a nap (guess I looked pretty bad).  I felt a lot better after some sleep and went back to work at noon.

Ran an easy 2.5 miles with the dog this afternoon.  My body is still aching, but I might do another workout later tonight.

RHR 43

Managed to fit in 4.5 miles between work and my shift at the temple.  Good workout there because we were so rushed and I ended up helping out in the laundry a lot.