I wasn't sure how far I would run this morning as I am sick, but I woke up feeling decent this morning so I decided to run a minimum of 15 miles today, and hopefully more, with a 5 mile tempo thrown in on my new tempo loop around the mall (1.25 mile loop). I started by running to the mall, and running laps around it until it was time for the tempo to start (6 laps total). I was thinking about picking it up just a little bit on the 6th lap as a segway into the tempo, but I started to feel a little sick and achy during the 5th lap, and I ran the 6th lap easy instead. My plan at the beginning of the run was to hit a heart rate of 165 for the first two laps, and then to pick it up to 170 and 175 for the third and fourth laps. However, when I started to not feel achy my heart rate started to spike, and by the time I started the tempo it was in the mid 150's. At the start of the tempo my HR was in the high 160's, but I felt like I was jogging. I went through the first quarter (downhill) in 1:20, followed by two consecutive 1:30's (rolling). I then decided to not worry about my preset HR goals, and I picked up the effort to what felt reasonable. 800 splits were 2:50, 2:58, 2:55, 2:56, 2:58, 2:52, 2:54, 2:50, 2:49, 2:40. Total time for the tempo was 28:42. My heart rate averaged about 170 during the first couple miles, and then slowly climbed until it was around 180 at the beginning of the final mile. During that mile it climbed as high as 186 during the final quarter when I was running uphill back to the starting line. The tempo was interesting. Yes, my heart rate was high because I was sick, and yes the tempo was kind of slow. What interested me was the fact that my heart itself did not seem to be affected. The HR was high I believe to compensate for other issues that were not the way they were supposed to be. It was also interesting, because I had no problem pushing the HR higher than I normally see it get, and I could tell early on in the tempo that I was not working hard, despite the high HR. I am going to have to experiment with things a little more. After finishing the tempo I ran home to get some water (by this point I was pretty dehydrated) and then ran a couple miles extra to finish up with 17 miles on the day in a time of 1:55:40
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