7 Mile Running Experiment

Yesterday I ran 7 miles on rested legs. Today I wanted to see my heart
rate on the same 7 mile run without rested legs. An experiment in
training.

Same time of day. Same nutrition. Same pace. Same temperature. Same
shoes. Same stretching beforehand. Even the same one song playing again
and again in the background. At the same volume.

I fully expected to have to work harder on today's run. I expected my
knee to hurt more. I expected to want to quit.

Surprisingly, I was wrong.

For the first five minutes I braced myself. I waited for the pain and
sluggishness to come. But it didn't. By 20 minutes I was feeling great.

At 30 minutes I realized that I was even feeling a little better than
yesterday. Yesterday my left back muscles cramped up at around 30
minutes. Not today.

The back of my knee did hurt a little more today. I'm still not sure if
I'm causing the pain by focusing on the knee because when I forget about
it the pain seems to go away.

On the chart for both workouts there's a dip in my heart rate at 23
minutes. I don't know why. I don't remember doing anything differently
at that time. The pace was constant throughout the run.

I did do two things differently today. 1) I didn't look at my heart rate
during the run. 2) I didn't count miles to go... I watched the clock.

Both seemed to help me psychologically. By not knowing my heart rate I
couldn't get worried about it. Not counting laps helped because time
seems to be a more stable element to me. Distance can be difficult of
easy based on your effort, but time is constant.

The discrepancy in total times recorded by my watch was due to my timing
in
starting and stopping it. Only a 13 second difference in the recording
but the same workout on the treadmill.

A surprising result today.

• 

  running