the (slow) beat goes on

The theme of good heart rates/paces continued today and I'm beginning to suspect it might reflect an actual (gasp) improvement in my fitness.

Tuesday is normally a workout day, but I kept it slow per the Mystery Coach's advice. He recommended 15-25' wup, 20' at 7:40, and 15-25' cdn as a conditioning workout. I padded the warmup a little and did 39' wup (long way to the track), 4800 meters at 7:43, 7:38, and 7:40 per 1600, and 19' cdn (direct route home).

The bottom line is that 7:40 pace was very easy in terms of effort and heart rate. Below are the splits

Time Distance Split time Split distance Split pace Avg. HR
0:09:50 1.01 9:50 1.01 9:42 150 (75%) -- HRM was screwed up
0:19:21 2.02 9:30 1.00 9:28 130 (65%)
0:28:07 3.02 8:45 1.00 8:46 125 (63%)
0:39:37 4.24 11:30 1.22 9:25 130 (65%)
0:47:20 5.23 7:43 0.99 7:49 145 (72%) -- 1600 on track in 7:43
0:54:59 6.22 7:38 0.99 7:43 148 (74%) -- 1600 on track in 7:38
1:02:40 7.24 7:40 1.01 7:34 148 (74%) -- 1600 on track in 7:40
1:11:38 8.23 8:58 1.00 8:59 134 (67%)
1:20:26 9.23 8:47 1.00 8:49 133 (67%)
1:21:07 9.31 0:41 0.08 9:06 133 (66%)

After the first mile on the track, I pretty much stuck at 148 bpm. That's very, very low for me. It's not even what I'd normally call an 80% run. It's barely in the high aerobic range. It also felt very easy. I was somewhere between 4-4 breathing and 3-3 breathing during the three laps. Mystery Coach said 7:40 should correspond to 163 bpm, but it wasn't close to that.

I don't think I'm overcooked or I wouldn't recover so well. Note how low my cooldown heart rate was at a pretty decent pace. I think/hope that backing off on the threshold stuff for a little bit and working on turnover will get me fresh again. I'll probably inch up the pace on these conditioning runs. I'm a little afraid of giving back what I've gained recently by backing off too much. I probably shouldn't be running 6:40 like I was, but 7:40 seems too slow.

The knee is still giving me trouble, but I did some light stretching before, during (at stoplights), and after my run that seemed to help a little.