March 27, 2009 Zone 2

Ahhh, Zone 2 runs.  What are the closest I get to an active recovery, which was an older run that had me in mostly zone 1.  It’s sort of mellow, at least in terms of the heart rate, so I consider this an easy run though any running for 70 minutes can hardly be considered easy.

The housekeeping:  7.6 miles, average pace of 9:12 per mile, 791 calories.  Like I said, an easy run. LOL  It is fascinating to say it that way, because it was less than a year ago that anything below 10:00 per mile was something I thought was out of my league.  Now that’s an easy run.  Amazing what running 4 days a week can do to perspective.

I got a new pair of running shoes.  I don’t know how often I really should change them, so I’ve arbitrarily set the limit at 300 miles per pair.  That means right now I’m looking at needing a new pair every 10 weeks.  That’s a ton of money on running shoes, but I also can tell the difference.  That is, of course, if I lace them correctly and don’t tie them too tightly.  They were comfy right until about mile 5 when I noticed that my feet were really tight inside the shoes.  By the end, I wished I could have jumped off the treadmill and taken them off to let my feet breathe.  I guess I’ll have to fix them before the next run.  At least I’d learned the lesson well before the next race.

Runs that involve no heart rate changes can be mundane.  I find my mind wanders quite a bit and had it not been for the shoe issue, I probably could have run much faster pace.  I’ve managed 8 miles in zone 2, barely, and while 7.6 isn’t shabby, it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I started the run.  I watched quite a bit of TV, as there was a tornado that touched down well East of our house and the gym, but it still caused all the weather gimps to have quite the weather-gasm and the Doppler 5000 and 3D Doppler radar sweeps were in full effect as local weathermen played with their Windows based storm tracking applications.  It is funny to watch as an IT professional, though the gravity of the matter is somewhat lost as I absorb the pure technical aspects.  I didn’t read any of the closed captioning, so I can only hope there were no serious injuries.  At least the run ended without much ceremony and I was able to get to stretch and contemplate the idiocy of my lacing as my feet throbbed like Jim Brown’s did in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.  If you don’t understand the reference, for God’s sake, rent the movie somewhere.  It is a classic.

To add insult to injury, so to speak, I came home to discover I’d left myself more than 2000 calories left in the last 5 hours of the day!  That’s a lot of eating, which means I effectively had three supper entrees and two desserts, plus my protein shake and staple of low fat cottage cheese.  I’ve got to do a better job of spacing my food intake.  3500 calories is a ton of eating and leaving most of it for supper isn’t wise.  I was surprised to learn that this week’s weigh in (I track my weight and only weigh once per week sort of like ‘The Biggest Loser’) I had actually dropped 2 lbs.  This was after gaining one per week for each of the last 5 and cresting at 160.  I hadn’t really been concerned about the increase.  I was taking in a ton of extra calories and in theory the weight gain should be all muscle mass.  It feels like it and yesterday I actually was able to fit comfortably into 30 waist pants again!  That would mean I’m exactly the size I was when I graduated high school in 1985 (Hello SHHS class of ‘85 if any of you are actually reading) and it frankly shocks me.  Of course, so did getting to 230, so I guess it’s better to be surprised this way.

I have 4 more workouts before the race on April 4th.  I have no idea what my goal for this race is.  I’d had my mind wrapped around a goal for the race May 10th, and this one sort of distracted me from that goal.  So, since my first 10K was 45:48, my goal for this race is going to be what my goal was for the May race; any time below 42 minutes.  That’s a LOT of time to suck out of my run.  228 seconds over 6.2 miles means I’ve got to drop my average from 7:23 per mile to 6:46 per mile.  That’s 8.87 miles per hour, and I haven’t done that over any significant length.  Eh, who knows?  I had planned a time below 50 for my first and smoked it.  Maybe I will smoke 42.  I won’t know until I cross the finish line.  I just want to finish in the top 20 runners overall.  That’s reward enough for someone that hasn’t run seriously longer than 18 months.

Cheers!