Enjoyable, but hard work: harder (mentally and physically) than I quite imagined. A host of factors, I think:
- haven't really been running enough during the week to justify twelve-mile weekend run
- coming off several weeks of truly massive and out-of-control stress and sleeplessness (i.e. have already dug excessively deep on stamina reserves)
- possibly underfueled (I find these mid-afternoon runs tricky to eat for properly, I did have breakfast and snack and lunch so it seemed plausibly OK but in practice perhaps not quite enough--maybe 950-1000 calories? I took a gel around mile 9 and definitely felt more energetic for miles 11 and 12--but perhaps that was just the scent of home...)
- and I suppose I have not really done that many 12-mile runs in my life, usually I do them with other people, conversation makes the time go by quickly!
However I did like it very much--and I am after all doing a half-marathon in three weeks (a hilly Central Park one...) so it was important to get in a good one this weekend...
Annoyingly the HR function was completely out of whack, I was getting totally implausibly high numbers (like 117% of HRmax) and had to ignore it! I went on subjective pace, which really I can do perfectly well now, only there's a tendency to creep up in speed--I think I went about 10-20 seconds per mile faster than I really am aiming for on these long ones.
12.17 miles, avg pace 10:00. Mile splits: 10:34, 10:12, 9:38, 10:12, 9:33, 9:56, 9:42, 10, 9:40, 9:48, 9:45, 10:25. (And a bit.)
(The first and last miles are slower because I'm running on city blocks rather than in the park--flat but full of interruptions...)
I must see if I can dig out the warranty on this Polar device and see if anything can be done, it is fine not having HR now and then but really I need it to work properly--I wonder if the problem is that I quite often wear it to swim, in theory it is waterproof to something like 2 meters but in practice perhaps not...
Now I have to go and do things to get ready for my trip to a tropical island paradise!
4 comments:
(And I will colonize my own comment section to add, before a Buckner or some other reader preempts me, that yes, if you follow the link it would indeed seem that they paved paradise and put up a parking lot...)
Have a great time!
(Maybe big yellow taxi will come take you to the airport?)
I think one can catch that taxi at the corner of Court and Spark.
Hmmm, somehow I knew I could count on you two!
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