Training Log - Thursday, March 4, 2010

So it was time for another training run today after laying off yesterday. And since I had to do it by myself for the first time in a couple of weeks, I decided to do something new or at least run a route I hadn't done in a while. I really didn't feel like it initially, but Richard texting me from Chile after arriving there this morning for his Atacama Desert Crossing 150 Mile Race really motivated me to go for a run. It also got me surfing the net for a nice challenging and exotic ultra marathon and I believe I found just the race. It's a 100k ultra marathon crossing two volcanoes on an island in Nicaragua, but more about that some other time. Today I decided to run downtown from my house and to pick up the Cotton Row Run course, a local 10k race that attracts up to 2,000 runners every Memorial Day.
The temperatures felt really mild and it was actually sunny when I came home from the office, so I decided that shorts and a long sleeve tech shirt would be enough protection. Big mistake. After I had been gone for about a mile, I realized that it got colder as soon as the sun was gone, significantly colder, tremendously colder, you get the point. By the time I realized it, I chose not to track back and just deal with it. I also wore a running hat. Since it would be mostly dark during my run, the hat would help me keep the headlights from the oncoming traffic out of my eyes. I decided to pick up the training pace right away to stay warm. At the bottom of Monte Sano Mountain, the race course contains one of the most challenging hills I have ever encountered on a shorter distance race. That section of my training run was the only place my heart rate went above 170. Otherwise, my heart rate was averaging 145. After I completed the 10k course I continued to track back to my house for a total of 11 miles. Keeping my heart rate at such a low level, imagine my surprise when I uploaded my run from my Garmin Forerunner and realized that I ran a sub 9 minute per mile pace. I never really felt winded at all and this run had a couple of serious hills in it as well. Overall, a great run. Let's see if I can get outta bed in the morning for my weekly long run.