Great run! The shuffle played Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan, and Bob Seger. At the end, Bob Seger was singing, "I'm older now, but still running... against the wind." Outstanding. Only complaints were the post-run Clif Bar (peanut crunchy something -- no more peanut Clif Bars for me thank you) and some nipple bleeding. Body glide didn't do the trick. Back to vaseline?
The best part of the run was that I maintained my speed throughout and didn't slow down or have any urge to stop. I changed my heart rate game plan slightly from normal. A lap around the lake is about 4.7 miles (depending on who you ask). Usually I give myself a 155 bpm max on the first lap, 160 for the middle laps, and 166 for the last four or five miles. I've had the "problem" lately that I seem to be much more comfortable running at higher heart rates these days and I felt I needed keep that in check. My guess is that it's the training (I swear the lactate threshold runs are magic), but the slightly warmer weather is probably a factors as well. Anyway, I restricted myself to 155 for the first two laps, 160 for the next, and at mile 16 (on the third lap), I gave myself 166 bpm max. This worked really well. I might have gone to 166 at mile 15, but that's splitting hairs. Lap times were: 46:19, 46:23, 45:24, and 46:06.
Marathon pace heart rate. I'm still puzzled about what heart rate I'll run the marathon at and whether I should watch my heart rate at all. When I was on vacation last week, I did my 15 mile with 12 miles at marathon pace run. I used my foot pod for speed and shot for 9 minutes miles. (I'm hoping to run a 4 hour marathon, which is 9:09 min/mi.) I ended up running them at 9:01 min/mi. (It looked a tad faster on the watch, but for some reason the distance is always about a tenth shorter in the computer program?) The heart rates were pretty low though. They split averaged range from 159 to 163 bpm at the end. The course was very flat there compared to my normal long run on the lake trail. Should I have run them faster? Anyway, the psychological boost of running my marathon goal pace at what I believe is a sustainable heart rate was a shot in the arm.I still don't know what heart rate at which you should run a marathon. I read somewhere that people run marathons at 80-89 %Max HR with elites at the 89% end and dorks like me in the low end. I'm guessing the difference is where your lactate threshold is. I have this book called Lactate Threshold Training by Peter Janssen that puts marathon pace at 94% of lactate threshold pace. Maybe I could just figure that out with one of the tests like staircase intervals or Conconi. This article also has some presciption on using heart rate for marathon pacing that matches pretty well with my marathon pace run.
The plan right now is just to run 9 min/mi, which it seems I can do and should give me my 4-hour marathon on a flat course (if I don't hit the dreaded wall). I have a tune-up 10K next weekend. If I have some kind of breakthrough maybe I'll reevaluate.
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