For Whom the Dogs Bark

65F, 5.72 miles in 1:15:00, 13:06 average pace, 126 average heart rate.  My pace for the first mile was 14:17, owing to getting my heart rate under control, so the rest of the run was pretty much in my normal range.  I am off the easy week now, so I let my average heart rate go up a little bit, but still within the zone.

As I ran by my house after the first lap four deer came blasting out of my neighbor's yard.  He is one of these yard-of-the-month guys, so our new neighborhood visitors gravitate toward him, so far they have left my two plants alone.  This is the second time I have seen these deer in his yard.  I am not sure if he knows about them, he probably thinks my kids are eating the bark off his prize birches.  I can see a culture clash coming in our peaceful little neighborhood, three factions:  the deer, who think everything is just fine as is; the friends of the deer, who think deer are people too; and the Texans, who are ready to blast away.  I'd best not say which group I belong to, though given my current speed one might correctly guess it isn't the first.

60F, 5.88 miles in 1:15:00, average pace 12:46, average heart rate 126 bpm.  Good run this morning, have done better only a couple of times at low heart rate.

Most of the run was in the dark.  Running around the lake I heard some rattling and clanking out on the water.  It was a rower.  So now in addition to walkers, bikers, fellow joggers, untrained dogs, psycho deer and mad herons, I now have to watch out for rowers.  Can't see rowing before daylight, there aren't any street lights out on the lake, and you never know what might be lurking beneath you.  I hear it's great exercise, though.

57F, 6.02 miles in 1:15:00, average pace 12:27 per mile, average heart rate 126 bpm.  Best low heart rate pace so far, I think my previous best was 12:38 per mile at 127 bpm.

My son's fiance had a military death in her immediate family which we found out about last night, so these are sad times all of a sudden.  Not sure what it means for their plans this fall but that is of secondary concern at the moment.

48F, 5.89 miles in 1:15:00, average pace 12:45 per mile, average heart rate 126 bpm. I started out fine then my heart rate got away from me half a mile in when I wasn't paying attention. Fought it for two miles and finally started getting some times comparable to yesterday. Overall not as good but I still got in a workout in the expected range. More worrisome, my achilles and a couple of other tendons in my right foot were sore at the beginning of the run. It went away but I think I am actually more vulnerable in my right foot than in my knees. I am doing these low stress workouts so I won't get injured, I hope it works.

The highest heart rate I had today was 174. I was reading an article last night about the different ways to guess at your maximum heart rate and 174 is in the upper range for my age. Someday soon when I am confident of not hurting myself I'll see how high I can get it. It will probably be higher than that. I guess heart rate is one of the components of VO2 max, the other being stroke volume (aside from ability of muscles to accept the oxygen, but they say that is not usually the limiting factor), so all of a sudden I am thinking it might be good if I have a high heart rate since that might mean more upside. I should go somewhere and get all of these metrics officially established.

46F, 5.97 miles in 1:15:00, average pace 12:33, average heart rate 126 bpm.  Good time but it should have been better.  I struggled this morning keeping my heart rate down.  About 3.5 miles in it started to go crazy, climbing by 30 bpm in the space of 15 seconds.  I could get it back down immediately when I slowed a little bit, and toward the end I was doing some sections at 115 to 120 bpm, strange.  Tomorrow I plan to do a long run at a 10 minute pace but I'm a little concerned.  Maybe I'll take my heart rate monitor with me and slow down if it gets too far out of whack.

56F at start, 66F at end, 17.62 miles in 3:00:00, average pace 10:13, no heart rate monitor.  Splits as follows:

10:43, 9:57, 9:49, 9:43, 10:10, 9:54, 9:52, 9:54, 10:03, 10:13, 9:55, 9:56, 10:09, 10:00, 10:12*, 11:14, 11:17, 7:00 (11:20 pace)

The goal was to run 3 hours at a 10:00 pace, didn't happen.  I had difficulties from the start keeping the speed up.  I never got down to an overall 10:00 pace, though I got within 2 cumulative seconds once, but I never went negative.  If the temperature had been 10 degrees colder I might have made it, but the lesson from this run is that I am probably not going to be ready to run my January 1 marthon in the low 4s -- mid-4s is more likely, which is nevertheless a significant improvement over St. George, especially considering this marathon is here in Flatlandia.

* I ran 14.5 miles before I broke and started slowing, then after another mile I detoured into the golf course clubhouse for a bathroom break.  I turned off my clock for that one, then started it again and jogged the rest of the way.