No spring in my step?

This was the strangest run ever for me.

I had been planning to do maybe 8 miles with something at the track, which would mean I could run at home before going to work (rather than get there early and run from there). Then last night as I was looking at the menu from Hudson's book, he had what looked to be about 11 miles, so I packed up my bag at about 10:45 and tried to go to sleep. Of course, I then woke up at 4:30. Since it was so early I figured I'd just do my run at the high school track near my house.

Here was the plan: 1.5 wup + 3 x (1 mile, 1k, 800m, 400m w/200m jog) at 10k -> 1500m pace. Ouch!

After 15 minutes of jogging, I found myself looking at a locked gate outside the track. I've run in the morning here before, but I guess not quite this early. This wasn't going well at all. I jog back to the old 10 laps per mile gravel track at the elementary school.

On my weird little track, I planned to do 3 x (10 laps, 7 laps, 5 laps, and 3 laps w/1 lap rest), which would be close to the plan.

My trusty Garmin is in Olathe, KS right now and I'm waiting for Garmin to send me a new (refurb) one, so I have my Suunto T6 on. The T6, unfortunately, has the world's worst backlight implementation. Not only does the backlight stink, but I can't figure out how to make it stay on. My only choices are "Normal" (press hold a particular button to get it to come on for a few seconds), "Night Mode" (on for a few seconds when I press any button), or "Off."

I tried the first mile at what, without looking at lap splits, thought was 10k pace. When I hit the lap button, it showed 6:56 and 164 bpm (not avg, but at the end of the interval). Um, that's kinda weak. I picked it up (or so I thought), and got down to ~6:40 pace for the next interval. After that, I never got much faster. The whole thing was bizarre. Near the end of the second set, I decided to stop and just run another 30' easy, because this obviously wasn't what was intended.

I tried everything to go faster. On the last interval (3 laps), I basically did what I felt was sprinting and only managed 1:52 -- 6:13 pace. The first mile of my 5k PR was 6:00 and (6:23 pace overall). My heart rate also never really got that high. I've put the graph of my heart rate below (ignore the first 10 minutes before I broke a sweat.) I've also added lines of 180 and 185, which are what I average for my last HM I raced (9/2007) and my last 10k (9/2008), respectively. My heart rate is really quite low. I would think it was because I was tired, but in the past when that's happened, I'd expect my heart rate not to recover so well, but look how well it recovered between intervals in only 0.1 miles (usually 55'') and how well it recovered in my cooldown run. When I've been overbaked, it would usually stay very high even when I was shuffling after a workout.


For completeness, here are the splits.

• 26' warmup (average from 16' - 26' was 118 bpm!)
• 6:56/6:56/160/164 (time/pace/avg bpm/bpm at mark); .1-mile jog
• 4:45/6:47/162/164; .1-mile jog
  
• 3:19/6:38/162/172; .1-mile jog
• 1:56/6:26/165/172
• .2-mile jog between sets
  
• 6:44/6:44/167/171; .1-mile jog
• 4:41/6:41/167/171; .1-mile jog
• 3:17/6:34/170/171; .1-mile jog
• 1:52/6:13/173/180
  
• 30' cooldown (133 bpm average)

Total: 2.7 wup + 5.8 interval + 3.1 cdn = 11.6 in 1:38:02; 8:28 mi/mi;

One thing I find interesting is that the interval portion totals 5.8 miles and I ran 7:07 pace (including the rest intervals) at 164.5 bpm average. For the first 6 miles of the Frederick marathon, I averaged 168 bpm and right at 7:30 pace (I avg'd 172 for the marathon). Does this mean I should just run intervals at my next marathon? :-)