Pacemaker

Good lord, can it be?! Am I really getting into running???

Went for another jaunt around the neighborhood this afternoon, this time a full loop, down to the lake, up and around. Never thought I would say this but I actually enjoyed it. You can take in a bit more of your surroundings when running as opposed to cycling and the views from Black Brook Rd. are pretty sweet.

Today I was trying to figure out how to pace myself. My first two runs this season felt a little herky jerky. Fast starts, mini bonk, level off. I wanted to try and even that out a bit. I set the Garmin to auto lap at 1 mile so I could keep track of my splits and I think I was pretty successful.

Loop came in at just under 4.5 miles and for the first two I was coming in at about 7:45/mile, third mile was just over 8 and mile 4 was about 9:20 (but it was also straight up a huge hill). And after that huge hill I was able to recover and bring my pace back down to just over 8mins for the last half mile.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/19738572

I felt like this was a pretty sustainable pace for me, I can usually gauge how much I have in the tank by my recovery rate after a bigger effort. I bounced back quickly after the effort up and over the hill on Eagle Ledge Rd so I think I could have easily gone another few miles at that pace. No knee pain and so far basically no soreness. Progress continues.

I also tried out running Pandora on my Blackberry for music and I was very pleased. Pretty slick little app and decent sound quality. I'll need to set up some more stations...or at least one called 'Running' based on Eye of the Tiger and Final Countdown...c'mon.

Yeah Running!

Took my first stab at seeing whether or not my body can handle running this afternoon. The jury is still out (i.e. have to wait and see how I feel tomorrow) but the initial results are promising.

I tried about a 5K (ended up being 3.2 miles) from the house out to Collesion Rd. and then back to where the dirt starts, with a cool down walk back up the hill to the house. Perfect little loop for me to test my progress over that distance which is basically the run distance for a Sprint Tri. Like it was meant to be....

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/18848691

Ended up with a time of 24:38. Which I am pretty proud of. I compared that time to the 2009 results of the Black Fly Tri (one I am planning on doing next year) and I would have come in 67th of 314 competitors for the running leg. Granted I was fresh for this run and not two legs into a tri but I bet I would still be in the top 100 range which is actually a bit better than I thought I would be starting from scratch.

This was a decent effort for me, avg heart rate was just about threshold. Definitely wasn't 'race pace' but I doubt I could have gone too much faster at this point without cramping or having some other kind of issue.

So all things considered I think if I get some better shoes and start running a bit more I can get running under my belt no problem. Of course this all depends on my knees. There was some soreness (about as much as expected I guess) but I am hoping better shoes will take care of some of that.

Now I just gotta blow up my floaties and see how fast I can swim!