My running partner is in her taper week before the San Francisco Half Marathon this weekend so I have been on my own. It is amazing how dependent you become on a running partner when you run regularly with them. The runs seem so boring if I am not yacking away with her. I used to run with music all the time, or with the radio, but I have been spoiled! They are no substitute!

So my first lonely run was a recovery run where I did my best to keep my heart rate at or near 70% of max (recovery ceiling) which for me is 143 bpm. On the run I was really happy with how well I did keeping it relatively steady. The reports I got when i got home showed more variation than I would have liked, but that is ok. I was also really happy with how fast I could go without going over that, at least for the first half. At one point I was able to keep up a sub 9 minute mile pace for several blocks before it started creeping up. The hills were torturous, I really had to slow down for them, but I was successful at keeping the hr down. Toward the end as I ran through the Reed campus class was just getting out. I was crawling along, but I decided to check the ego at the door and just do what I was supposed to. I was really tempted to jet past several smokers, can’t believe how many people still smoke. The run took forever, 1:26 for 8 miles but it felt pretty good. Despite the slow pace my legs were pretty sore.

So this morning after my slow run yesterday, I figured today was time for some pain! My plan was to do my hill run in Eastmoreland. I started out with a mile of warmup then hit the hills. Three blocks down, one block over and three blocks up. For the most part the pattern goes three blocks of hills, then five recovery blocks (one over, three down, one over to the next hill) so essentially I just criss-cross blocks along this ridge. On the hill portions I really step on the gas and try to do them as hard as I can. I maxed out my hr at 180 today, spending a lot of time in the upper 170s. The thing I am most happy with is is my hr drops considerably on the recovery portions, at times all the way into the 120s, mostly mid 130s.

This being the second time I have done this workout, I was especially excited to compare the two runs. Unfortunately I realized that they were really not identical as the first time I had run down to Reed to use the bathroom. Also they are doing sewer construction and on different blocks, so that sort of messed me up a little bit as well. But I was able to compare pace and hr. This time I did the run a bit faster and got my hr up higher. I still want o comb over the numbers and see how the recoveries compared. I just love the data you get out of the Garmin.

Speaking of the Garmin Forerunner 405, I just figured out how to customize all of my displays as well as my heart rate zones. Pretty slick. I am not going to go into how to do it, suffice it to say it is all in the manual and is surprisingly simple to do. I love this watch.