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Sunday 2 June 2013

Juneathon day 2 - slowing down even more

Day two of Juneathon and I'm still playing with my new heart rate monitor. The aim for today's run was to cover 5k whilst keeping my heart rate below 70% of my heart rate reserve - the level that seems to be recommended for recovery runs. What I've learnt from this is that what I've previously thought of as an easy recovery pace is actually far too fast. To keep my heart rate this low I had to slow down. A lot. My natural instinct is generally to hare off like a rat up a drainpipe so to keep the pace as slow as needed wasn't easy. I'm also naturally blessed with an insanely competitive nature so found it pretty much impossible not to speed up whenever I passed another runner, not wanting anyone to think that my snail's pace was the best I could do. It's pretty easy to see when I must have passed someone by looking at the heart rate graph.

Spotify, as if mocking me, chose all the most crazily motivating fast running tracks from my running playlist (Rocky theme, Eye of the Tiger, a whole heap of super-fast Chemical Brothers and Primal Scream tracks) in a desperate attempt to get me speed up. I may need a new play list for future recovery runs to guard against this. On the plus side, both today and yesterday Spotify randomly spat out Daft Punk's Giorgio by Giorgio Moroder as the last track of the run. This, it turns out, is an absolutely magnificent track to run to on a sunny evening. Ideally you'd want to be listening to it running along a beautiful beach somewhere I think, but for now the industrial estates of Aylesbury will have to do.

Day two - 5k in 36.03
Runningfree stats


 

2 comments:

  1. Know exactly what you mean about this slower pace problem, it just doesn't feel right! I'm running slowly at the moment as I'm recovering from injury, and I feel the need to explain this to everyone I pass (runner or non-runner)in case they think I'm a rubbish runner!!! Good luck...

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  2. I get the same urge when I'm overtaking pedestrians. At the pace I was running at yesterday it was taking forever to catch someone up, inch past them and then slowly, slowly pull away. Glad it's not just me!

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