1%

This morning I got up and had sore calves. I'm not really all that surprised because I knew yesterday that I had skipped stretching and it wouldn't be good for me. I should have done it when I got home yesterday, but I had better things to do ... like making lunches and showering. I wouldn't have done it outside yesterday because I think I would have frozen my buns off, which left me with the soreness today.

Nonetheless, I trotted off to the gymnasium and hopped on a treadmill and started my workout. I walked for a few minutes as a warm-up and then set off running to do what is really tomorrow's workout of 4 miles plus 4 gentle pickups. The 4 miles went pretty well. I didn't really feel tired or anything by the end of them and I also thought that they went by faster today than they have in the past, which seems like a good thing.

I realized that I should mention that for all of my runs at the gym on the treadmill, I've been running at a 1% incline. I don't normally mention it because it's like second nature to me as I've heard that it is a better representation to running outdoors if you have the treadmill at a small incline. I probably won't mention it again, but I just thought I should state it for the record.

The pickups were actually pretty fun. Even though it looks like I was running slower on the pickups than I was for the actual running, it's really not true. I started out each pickup by walking at about 3.5 then would bump it up to around 6.5 for a few seconds before heading up to the peak for the pickups. I did each pickup for at least 30 seconds and I did them at 8.7, 9.0, 9.4 and 9.9 speed. Really, really proud of that 9.9 speed. Not that I thought it was at all sustainable long term, but I also didn't feel like I wanted to die after those 30 seconds, which seems like a good start! After each pickup, I'd go back to walking to get my heart rate down out of the high 180s and back into the low 160s before starting again.

We're off to Barcelona tonight and I'm not sure if I'll be blogging while I'm there, but I can promise that there will be some form of exercising while we're there, I'm just certain how much it will entail.

Running
Time: 40:34
Distance: 4.00 miles
Pace: 10:08/mile
Calories: 513
Maximum HR: 194
Average HR: 175

Pickups
Time: 7:17
Distance: 0.70 miles
Pace: 10:24/mile
Calories: 89
Maximum HR: 188
Average HR: 172