Short and Fast

This morning I wasn't really in the mood to get up and out of bed to go for a four mile run. I really wanted to talk myself out of, but I knew I'd feel much better if I did the 4 miles prescribed by Hal Higdon for today. As a "treat", I did something I don't normally do and wore my iPod Shuffle. I figured that since the run was so short (relatively speaking) it wouldn't make much of a difference if I wore it.

Once I got outside, I really felt like seeing what my legs were capable of today, especially after already logging 13 miles this week. Even though I'm really really happy with my long run pace, I wanted to see if I've got any running mojo left.

As a side note, I used body glide yesterday and today to try to help with the heart rate monitor strap chafing issues I've been having. The skin is still getting red, but it doesn't rub it raw like it did before, so even though it doesn't look so great, at least it doesn't hurt while I'm running. I'll take that. I think the big test will be this weekend for my 14-miler. (Can I just say that it seems crazy to me that I'm actually going to attempt to run that far?).

I ran my 4 miles to the Park, up the West Side, cut across the Great Lawn and then headed back down the East Side towards home. Once I got to 72nd Street on the East Side, I knew I was doing pretty well, but I was hoping to have a speedy last mile. I figured the best way to do that was to throw in some intervals.

The easiest way for me to trick myself into doing intervals is to use the lamp posts in the Park. I would run the distance of 4 lamp posts, recover for one lamp post, run 4 more speedy, etc., until I reached the end of the Park. And then I tried to run as fast as possible while dodging people on the sidewalk home!

I had a rough idea that my route today was 4.0 miles before I left, so I was pretty happy with my time (which would have been just under 10 minute miles), but when I used Gmap Pedometer and discovered that it was really 4.2 miles, I was SUPER happy!

I have no illusions of running my marathon this quickly, but it's good to know that even when I'm tired and my legs are a little bit tired on their third consecutive day of running, something like this is still possible. Of course, now I've gone and ruined it and will be hoping for results like this in future weeks, too.

Running
Time: 39:03
Distance: 4.20 miles
Pace: 9:17/mile
Calories: 346
Maximum HR: 179 (84%)
Average HR: 165 (78%)