Wednesday. Hump Day. Midweek slow down. I was dragging today for sure. It may have had a lot to do with working until 9pm last night, and then having to be back at the hospital at 7am this morning for an ICU shift. But, also my legs were a little angry with me...achy and pretty sluggish. It was clear that I was not going to have the energy or the leg power to pound out a 7 miler tonight. Plus I've been trying to read up a little on training and the different kinds of running workouts to incorporate, and a common theme I've seen is to listen to your body. Don't push too hard or you will set yourself up for injury. So I listened and I deviated from the plan on tonight's run. I decided on 3 miles instead of 7. I would have probably made it a rest day all together, but I couldn't let this awesome weather go to waste. Here is the 6 day forecast on my phone earlier today...crazy awesome for mid March!!
Another reason for my decision to go ahead with a short run tonight was that I wanted to take these babies for a spin...
They arrived Tuesday after I had finished my run already for that day and I really wanted to test them out on a short distance to make sure there would be no rubbing issues that might create a blister. I'm happy to report that they feel great!
Since I was feeling so sluggish I decided this would be a good time to try out some pacing...another thing I've been reading up on lately. My Garmin Forerunner 610 has a feature on it called the virtual partner. This feature allows you to put in a target pace and then it continually shows you during your run how you are pacing compared to your 'partner' at the set pace. I've noticed that my pace has really been all over the place. I usually start out faster until I find my rhythm, then my pace slows throughout the run, then I tend to pick it back up at the end. I definitely would like to keep a more steady and constant pace throughout. So tonight for my 3 mile run, and not feeling very energetic, I put my virtual partner at a 9:30 min/mile pace. It actually worked very slick. It told me how many seconds I was lagging behind or was ahead of my 'partner' and the cues really helped me to fine tune my pace to get it right. Here's my data stats from the run.
I thought I did pretty good for my first time pacing...9:29 is pretty darn close to 9:30! I will definitely use this feature again.
So tomorrow night was to be a rest day but I'm subbing in my 7 miler instead to make up for tonight. Here's hoping my legs feel fresher and I have more energy on board. At least the weather should be fantastic again.
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