Saturday 6 December 2008

Long Run Joy

Tuesday was long run day again this week. After last week's performance, when I really started to suffer after an hour, I really wasn't looking forward to it. Last week I just seemed to run out of energy part of the way through the run so this week I made sure I took things easy on the run into work and ate plenty during the day.

After work I set off to the park to start doing laps. At the start I made a real effort not to make too much of an effort. When I reached the hour mark I felt really good and started to put in more of an effort. By my last lap of the park I was feeling really strong and pushing along well. It would be going a bit too far to say I was enjoying a 2.5 hour run but it was far from being the worst part of my day. When I eventually got home I was tired but it was nothing like the feeling I had last week.

Once I downloaded the run from my Garmin into SportTracks I was surprised to find that my average pace per km for the two runs was only different by 2 seconds. Which is essentially nothing. However, my pace for the recent run was fairly constant throughout with my heart rate gradually climbing towards the end. For the first run my pace was slightly faster at the start but dropped at the end, strangely my heart rate dropped at the end as well while I was suffering. I am not sure whether the problem was that I went too fast on the first run or, my prime suspect, that I was tired and didn't take in enough energy during the day and on the run. Until proved otherwise I am going to stick with my belief that it was down to energy. If nothing else it gives me an excuse to go the Chinese on Tuesday lunchtimes.

1 comment:

Doris said...

Sounds like you bonked on the other run... when you push too fast and run out of glycogen (due to lack of nutrition) you feel like crap and your HR will lower... something like that... it's the bodies way of coping when you've gone out too hard without enough sweet stuff getting into the blood.

Good job on the run earlier this week though!