I finally got around to being able to run this week - the shortened leg workout from Sunday still resulted in a couple days of soreness, and I did not want to run before I was adequately recovered.
I debated what type of run to do today - after a few days of not doing much (just the legs/back workout on Sunday, and yoga on Tuesday), I wanted to do something reasonably substantial in terms of time and distance, but I also wanted to do something like a tempo run. The only problem is that the tempo run, at 20 minutes of tempo pace, was less than what I was looking to do.
So I ended up deciding to do about 10 miles, but at a slightly higher intensity than before. Previously, I had done the 10 mile loop with one mile warm up, 8 miles at a target HR of 155, and one mile cool down. Today I decided to aim for a HR more like 155-160 during that 8 mile stretch, and see where that would take me, being conscious of how I was feeling to make sure I wasn't going to overdo it.
After I felt warmed up, I started increasing the pace to try and get my HR to that 155-160 zone. However I noticed something strange - the pace dropped as one would expect, but it kept dropping farther than I thought it would. I got to my target zone and found that I was well below 8 min/miles! The last time I did this run, last week - I was hovering right around 8 min/mile. So I told myself 'well, lets see what happens - if I start to feel like I'm flaming out after a few miles, so be it'. But - that didn't happen. My HR slowly increased during the course of the run, started to hover closer to 160 vs 155 towards the last half - but my pace wasn't dropping by a substantial amount. I distinctly remember being past mile 8 and the timer showing an hour and three minutes - I was averaging less than 8 min/miles, and that included the warm up mile!
As the miles ticked by, I was amazed at how strong I felt - sure, I was getting fatigued, but only mildly. Once I hit mile 9, I immediately slowed up to give myself a full mile in my recovery HR zone of < 150. By the time I finished, I had run the longest stretch of < 8 min/miles I've ever done in my life. Sure, in high school I ran about 6:30 min/miles, but that was only for 3 miles. Back then my longest run was probably 7 miles or so. So doing 8 miles in the 7:30 - 7:40 min/mile pace is quite the performance improvement.
While I'm super-excited about the results, I have to keep a level head - it was drizzly/rainy, and that means there was little effort my body had to put into cooling itself off. But it was still quite the pleasing result.
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