Heart Monitor Running Diary – Week Three (Part 1)
My cold only lasted a few days and had very little impact, so I didn’t need to hold-back the training. I started the new training week with a four mile run and showed improvements across the distance. The split times for each mile were 10:31, 21:56, 34:06 and 46:46.
The day after I ran five miles starting at 5.9mph with gradual reductions to 4.6mph (using the methods I have outlined previously). This resulted in further improvements to my split times – 10:25, 21:25, 33:00, 45:28, and 58:22. Overall, this was more than three minutes faster than the five mile run just a few days before.
Day three was a rest day, then on day four I trained exactly the same as day two. I held the starting pace for more than 0.6 miles (approximately one kilometre) before starting to gradually reduce the speed to keep my heart rate at my recovery ceiling. I’ll therefore increase my starting pace to 6mph for my next run, which will be six miles distance. The split times today were 10:18, 21:04, 32:45, 45:04 and 58:00.
The progress is encouraging and I’m starting to look forward to running some races in the future. I’m hoping to run a spring Marathon next year. It would be good if I could be ready for a half-marathon before the end of this year. I’ll see how the training develops over the next few weeks.
Hopefully you can begin to see why I have emphasized how motivational it is to train with a heart rate monitor, along with keeping records. You can continue to follow my progress on the Women’s Heart Rate Monitor blog.
September 24 2009 11:33 am | Heart Rate Monitor Running Diary