Cold Morning Run

Yesterday's Total Net Calories:  1,717

Since tomorrow is the Turkey Chase, and the temperature at starting time will be somewhere between 35 and 40 degrees, I decided that it was time to do a run in the outdoors.

It has been a while and I have been whimping out being in the elements.  Last night I checked the weather report and it was getting down to 29 degrees overnight, so I figured this would be a sub-freezing temperature run.  I dressed in my running tights, long sleeve t, running jacket, gloves and a beanie (and my reflector vest as it was still dark when I got out the door at 6:15am).

It ends up that it was only 38 degrees - I've run in shorts and a long sleeve t-shirt in that weather before - however, there was a swirling wind, so I was glad to be bundled and layered up.

Being that it was my first "winter run" I put the Nutcracker Suite in my iPod.  It's such great music for the season!

My goal this morning was to keep the pace easy.  I wanted to see what my outdoor pace is at the sub-150 bpm heart rate.  For the first 2 miles I did fine.  Then I realized that I was speeding up as the music was crescendo-ing (I think it was the music when the Nutcracker battles the Army of the Mouse King...).  I got myself to slow down, but I really don't know how long I was running faster.  I finished the 3.4 mile run at an 11:10/mile pace with an average HR of 151.

I think I have a race plan for tomorrow.  I'm going to run the first 2 miles at sub-150 heart rate.  I'll then bump it up to between 150 and 160 for the third mile.  After that, I'm going to try to run the final 5K at a brisk pace and not work about heart rate.  I'm not expecting the last 5K to be anywhere near the 25:17 I ran in early September :-)  However, I can probably run 9 minute miles over the last half if I conserve my energy up front.  I'll see if I can keep to this.

Good luck to everyone running Turket Trots tomorrow!!!