3 Miles - 9/4

Today's run was a simple 3 miles. Last week, my run after the day of speedwork was surprisingly difficult, and my legs never felt quite right. Today was much better. Encouraged by yesterdays result, and somewhat curious as to whether I could keep up an 8 minute pace for longer then 1 mile, I decided to try and to the whole run a bit faster then scheduled. Rather than 1-2 minutes per mile slower then a race pace, I decided to try and aim for a HR of about 165, and see how I felt if I kept that sustained for the 3 miles. This is the idea behind a tempo run.

Overall it went pretty well - I was passing mental checkpoints more quickly then I normally do, and I felt pretty strong throughout the whole run. However, without a dedicated 5-7 minutes of warmup, the short 3 mile run is heavily skewed in average HR, as it takes that 5-7 minutes to get things really going. So while I did my best to keep an average of 160-165 throughout the run (with the first mile getting to the lower part of that range, the second mile being pretty consistently within that range, and the last mile spending more time in the 163-168 range), when I finished up and looked at the results, I was a little disappointed to find out that my average HR was lower then I was looking for.

Total time - 26:16
Total distance - 3.04 miles
Avg HR - 158

That gives me an average pace of 8:38 per mile. At this point, although I felt strong throughout the entire run, I'm a little doubtful I could keep that pace up for an entire half marathon. With my secondary goal of finishing in 2 hours requiring a 9 min/mile pace, it is currently looking like there is a very good chance I'll come up a bit short.

However, there are a few things that give hope:
- I still have over 5 weeks to train.
- Race day is right after a day of rest, or at most a very easy run that serves only to keep the wheels greased.
- I have found that a small reduction in HR can make a big difference in endurance. You only have to notice that a HR of 150 gives me the endurance for the long runs, while a HR of 170 can only be sustained for relatively short periods of time. So trying to average around 155 may be a good compromise.
- Todays conditions were a bit on the humid side, which I've found always drives the HR up a bit.
- I may be better off starting slowly, to give my body time to begin burning stored fuel before the immediately available glucose in the blood supply is depleted. At that point, the body may be constantly trying to catch up with itself.