A Running Boost from Mother Nature

This week I was set to start an early morning outdoor group fitness class at one of the local country clubs.  The club is only about 4 miles from my house, so it's kind of nice to be able to roll out of bed and get to my first appointment of the day so easily.  On days that I don't have any appointments right after, I may even be able to run there and back!  Like many new programs, I think this one may take a little while to get rolling as far as participation goes as I haven't had anyone come to class yet.  It probably doesn't help that it's the week of spring break here. ;)

While I was waiting on my first morning of class I was checking out the scenery.  I will mostly be teaching down at the tennis courts with access to part of the golf cart path if I want to throw in some running.  Right around the tennis courts is the main clubhouse, the pool, and a small section of the golf course.  As I was checking everything out for ideas on how to utilize my new domain I just happened to look up the sky and thought the view was so striking that I took out my phone to snap a picture.  The juxtaposition of the vibrant green landscaping and the slowly emerging light in the sky was breathtaking.  Though I hope to get some participants soon so they don't cancel the class, I felt quite blessed to have that moment all to myself.

My last few runs have been a little lackluster, but having this early morning touch of beauty put some fire back in my britches to get out later in the morning to put in the work.  It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and forget about what we really want out of life.  I want to continue to improve in my distance running, so by golly I'm trying to put in the training.  After a very easy run on Sunday, I decided to go back to a run I did a few weeks ago with a combination of distance and late-stage speed work.

You can see my original stats here in one of my #runforsteem posts.  This time around I had thought it would be nice to get in my 5 miles then hit the track for the 800's, but the school track right near our house was locked.  I assumed it would be a great time since the kids are on spring break.  Wrong. ;)  Oh well, back up to the main route I went.  With my detour I tacked on about a mile, so I ended up with close to 9 miles total for the day as opposed to the 8 miles I got the last time I completed this workout.

Once again I was pretty happy with the consistency of my work intervals.  I was a few seconds slower per mile on average than my last training attempt, but it wasn't enough of a difference to be worrisome to me in any way--especially since I was doing it on a hilly route instead of on a flat track.  This was also the second run in a very long time that I actually broke out my heart rate strap for my Garmin.  I averaged in the mid 140 beats per minute range for the first part of my run, which I think is a pretty good rate for what I wanted out of that portion and to have enough in the tank to hit the second portion hard.

Then you can see my heart rate was bumped up a good bit for the interval portion of the run.  I was a little surprised that it didn't go higher in the later stages as I felt like I was pushing pretty hard.  To be fair, I haven't done any kind of max heart rate testing in quite a while so the 170's might very well be close to my threshold.  I'll have to play around with it some more, but for now it's just interesting to have another metric to analyze for my training effect.

I had a rest day the day after this run, then I had a solid strength workout yesterday.  Today I should have time for another shorter easy run this afternoon in between sessions.  I think I need to get at least one more double digit long run in and a few more speed sessions before the race, which is now only three weeks away!  For you folks who actually read my posts, I may have a fun little contest coming up--so stay tuned! ;)

I hope you all find some epiphany moments in your week to keep you motivated no matter what your goals are!