Saturday, October 25, 2008

My First Run In Over A Week!

Finally!

I felt good enough to go for a run this morning.  I'm no longer coughing, although I still have a little congestion.  Still, I felt well enough to go for a 3 mile run in the neighborhood.

I lucked out on the weather.  At 7am it was in the mid-50s and the rain had stopped.  It had rained during the night and it will pick up again later this morning...it was definitely a sign from above, "Mike - it's time to run..."

I decided to do a few push ups before I headed out - to see how many consecutive push ups I could do after week 1 of the Hundred Push Up Challenge.  Last week - before I started the program - I was able to do 11...this morning I did 18.  Pretty good improvement after one week!  I'm not sure how I'm going to do over 30 consecutive push ups - let alone 100...  But then again, before this year I didn't think I'd be able to run 26.2 miles either.

I finally got out the door at 7:15.  It was great to be running again!  During my warm up walk, I saw my HR was in the low 90s - it is normally in the high 70s, low 80s during my walk, so I knew this would be a slower run.  My goal was to stay around 150 bpm - an easy, controlled pace.  There were times - up some hills or when my mind started to wander and I wasn't paying attention to my pace and HR - when my HR was in the high 150s or low 160s, but as soon as I realized it I got it back down.  I ended up running my 3 mile lake loop at an 11:49/mile pace with an average HR of 149.  It will definitely take a week or so to get me back to my normal pace at that HR, but for today I was just glad to be pounding the pavement once again!!!

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