Heart Monitor

I woke up at about 2 this morning to the sound of pouring rain, and went back to sleep feeling hopeful. I woke up again at about 4 hearing the neighbor’s wind chimes banging, and I felt dread. The alarm went off at 5:30 and there was silence.

I did not want to run. My week has been out of whack and I am just tired of the grind. Knowing there is a week and a half of hard training left for Boston has got me tempted to just walk it in. I remember writing on Tuesday that (if I got injured) worse case scenario was that I’d have a 5-week taper. The idea of the extended taper has stuck. A stark contrast to the crescendo that I imagined my training as ending on.

The only solution to this kind of thinking is to just get outside. BN loop this morning. Despite the silence, there was a stiff wind that was going to feed the legendary Schuylkill headwind. This added to my malaise, as it guaranteed my tempo times would be off. The focus today had to be on effort, which Garmin has sofar not come up with a device to measure.

First mile down MLK was all I feared it to be, with a heavy headwind slowing me down to 6:20 on the first mile. Second mile I endured the heavier headwinds and managed to pick it up during the pauses, leading to a 6:06. Mile 3 the winds, while still blowing, were calmer and I ran a 5:50. And mile 4 was a 5:57. 24:13 total (compare this to times right at 24 the last two times out).

Up the BN hill and the wind was swirling – at times bringing flashbacks of Caesar Rodney and at other times actually being at my back. Crested the summit in 8:58 and made it to the plateau in 16:35. Both times were faster than last week.

These times under this morning’s conditions speak for themselves. Last week I said that track performance was a poor prognosticator of race time (judging by Saturday’s 5k time I was right on with that), this week I’ll observe that pre-workout mind/body state has little correlation with workout performance. If my anterior tibialis had even said “boo” this morning I would have stayed in bed. After the first, 6:20 mile I would have been satisfied with just keeping that pace. But I just got stronger and felt a reserve of speed I did not have last week. This amounts to my best performance, effortwise, to date. C’mon Garmin, invent something to measure this.

I showed myself some heart this morning. That is what I’m most proud of.

13.5 miles in 1:41:54.