Benchmark

 So, I’m now back being officially coached for almost a full month and to say it has been a learning experience would be an understatement.  My body has already done 140.6 miles and even with almost 6 weeks off the expectation was that muscle memory would take over relatively quickly and I’d jump right back into a 6 day a week training schedule.  What we didn’t expect was the changes to my training and nutrition that are a result of the cluster headaches.

For the last month I have been doing all of my running at a very low heart rate with no focus on pace.  A friend told me that the pace would get faster at the lower heart rate as long as I was patient and trusted the process which I have so far.  This past Thursday was Thanksgiving and with it came the annual turkey trot races.  I decided that this would be as good a time as any to do an early season test of my new training on a fairly hilly 5k course.  I spoke to my coach prior and we decided that I would adhere to a 1 minute run, 30 second walk strategy with a goal of keeping my heart rate under 150 no matter what, if this meant walking the uphills than so be it.  Mission accomplished, average heart rate 147, pace 12:15 which was completely irrelevant to this run.

This morning I went out and ran for 36 minutes at an average heart rate of 127 and a pace of 13:07, a huge improvement from a month ago.  More importantly I’m learning to feel my heart rate which allows me to speed up or slow down accordingly.  My swim and bike also seem to be coming back quicker than expected which is a pleasant surprise.

On a related, but unrelated note Jordan played his first soccer game with his new team today.  It is an elite club team that he recently made.  I share this here because he worked really hard to make this team and I’m very proud of him. We’ve been going to the gym and lifting every weekend together and his commitment to getting better is evident.  I like to think that his work ethic and drive is something that he has developed as a result of watching me.  

When I train whether he’s there or not I always think to myself, “he’s always watching”.

Until next time.

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