HHM Challenge - Run #18

Made it out early this morning with my dog, as I have plenty of things to do on this Halloween day. For the record, I don't usually like running early in the morning, especially on weekends as I'm not usually awake. Today, knowing I had to run early, I decided to get up early and before my alarm had a chance to go off, all 3 of my kids were already awake and in our room. Fun times. I look forward to the days where sleeping in means later than 6:30am.

Here are my numbers.

		My results	Comments
Type of Run	Steady	HR Zone 3	walked a fair bit
Distance	3 Km	3 Km	total: 74km
Pace	7:19	8:16	very slow
Average HR	127-145	137	perfect
Max HR	181	157	a little high
Calories Burned		316	total: 9556

Not to make excuses, but my dog threw off my pace today. She was too excited to be running and couldn't maintain something comfortable. Add the fact that loud noises scare her, she wasn't fun to run with. Oh well, it's not like I'm a world class athlete that really needs to focus on his running pace.

Happy

I'm not exactly sure why, but on my commute to work this morning, I kept smiling for no other reason than to be smiling. Nice to see that when I'm not focusing on something, I can be found in a happy state of mind.

Keep smiling and have a good day.

HHM Challenge - Run # 17

Went out today and worked on keeping my HR within Zone 3.

Here are my numbers.

		My results	Comments
Type of Run	Steady	HR Zone 31	walked a fair bit
Distance	3 Km	3 Km	total: 71km
Pace	7:19	7:58	slow
Average HR	127-145	136	perfect
Max HR	181	146	great
Calories Burned		346	total: 9240

As you can see, my pace is very slow for these type of runs. I did keep my HR lower than the last time, so the next time I try this run (saturday?) I will try to increase my pace a bit and walk a little less.

Great Site

I found this site a while back (I may have even had it sent to me by a friend, I'm not sure) and think it is awesome for planning running routes.

The site is gmap-pedometer.com and it uses Google maps. If you check it out you will see that you can add points on the map so that you can have an idea how far you are running. Since I have a Garmin watch, I don't need to plan my distances ahead of time, but sometimes I need to plan a route that matches a desired distance. The reason I like to plan it ahead is so that I don't end up short or too long on my distance when I do a big loop. Up until now, I've been able to hop on a local bike path to do my long runs, where I just do an out and back, but now that the weather is starting to change, that bike path soon won't be available for running and I will need to run on sidewalks. This means that if I want to finish at home without doing an out and back, I will need to have an idea as to where I should turn in order to achieve my distance.

Check it out, the site may surprise you as to how versatile it is.

In parting, I will leave you with a quote from a song I like.

"Wouldn't it be great, if the band just never ended
We could stay out late and we would never hear last call
We wouldn't need to worry about approval or permission,
we could - slip off the edge and never worry about the fall"

Consequence Free, Great Big Sea (Turn)

HHM Challenge - Run #16

Made it out again today. This is starting to become a habit :)

Here are my numbers.

		My results	Comments
Type of Run	Tempo	6:1	should be steady
Distance	4 Km	4 Km	total: 68km
Pace	6:36	6:36	perfect
Average HR	145-163	157	perfect
Max HR	181	172	great
Calories Burned		527	total: 8794

As you can see, my numbers are almost the same as yesterday. I found another route that doesn't have as big of a hill, but this hill is longer. With this route I kinda go 1 km slowly uphill and then back down only to turn around and do it again. The first km wasn't a problem but I was feeling it heading up the hill on my way back (@ 3km). Overall, it was a good run even though it was raining for most of it.

HHM Challenge - Run #15

I did it. I signed up for the Hypodermic Half Marathon today, so I'm officially on the hook to get this thing done. It will be my 1st half marathon since May 2008. I'm actually excited about it.

I also made it out for another run today. Here are my numbers.

		My results	Comments
Type of Run	Tempo	6:1	should be steady
Distance	4 Km	4 Km	total: 64km
Pace	6:36	6:30	little fast
Average HR	145-163	157	perfect
Max HR	181	168	great
Calories Burned		519	total: 8267

I went out and pushed myself for the first 2km and ended up 40s ahead of pace for the turn, so I slowed down on my way back (just a bit) and came in just little faster than what was expected. Even with pushing myself, I managed to keep my HR in the proper range for a Tempo run. As you can see I'm now up to jogging 6 mins before walking and feel that I can probably do a little more.

HHM Challenge - Run #14

Went out with a buddy of mine and did a 9k LSR today. Overall, it was a great day to run and we came in a little faster than expected.

Here are my numbers.

		My results	Comments
Type of Run	LSR	6:1	should be 10:1
Distance	9 Km	9 Km	total: 60km
Pace	7:19-8:11	7:13	little faster
Average HR	127-145	147	pretty close
Max HR	181	159	great
Calories Burned		1139	total: 7748

As you can see, my numbers are pretty close inline to what they were expected and that is good.