Evaluating Progress

Usually I would be doing an evaluation every fortnight but for now we decided to go for a weekly session. The purpose is not so much to evaluate my form more often but to provide a moderate stimulus after all the easy running I've been doing, while still keeping an eye on my recovery and capacity for recovery.

Last week I did have some sore legs after the evaluation, so there is a definite need to be careful. On the other hand I managed to bounce back very well, so thing s are definitely improving. For the first few days of the week I seem to have settled into a slightly lower effort level with the HR distinctly lower than previously but somehow I'm still running 8-minute miles. Keep in mind that I'm not using my watch to guide the effort - I always run at whatever level comes naturally and only ever check the watch after arriving back home.

I had considered moving the evaluation to Wednesday but had my usual post-yoga legs on Tuesday and first wanted to make sure I had recovered and left it for Thursday.

Again, I used my old Garmin 310 for the evaluation. The Suunto seems to have issues with recognising u-turns and tends to cut off a few seconds each time. That's not a problem when running 7 miles with one u-turn in the middle but when you're doing an evaluation that consists of running half a mile each way four times then 2 u-turns per mile do add up and the Suunto data just doesn't seem to be very accurate in that respect.

Anyway, the Garmin's numbers came up as:

       
        Mile 1    7:03   HR 162
        Mile 2    7:13   HR 162
        Mile 3    7:10   HR 162
        Mile 4    7:11   HR 162
        Recovery to HR 130: 39 seconds

I had to promise not to focus too much on the numbers but they did make me happy nevertheless as they are so much better than last week it's hard to believe that there are only 7 days between the 2 workouts - faster, much more even and with a significantly faster recovery time. Now, if I had learned to run by just 1 single heart beat per minute less it would have been almost perfect.

13 Feb

7 miles, 56:44, 8:06 pace, HR 144

14 Feb

7 miles, 56:21, 8:03 pace, HR 145

15 Feb

7 miles, 55:58, 7:59 pace, HR 144

16 Feb

8 miles, 1:00:58, 7:37 pace, HR 156

   incl. 4 mile eval: 7:03, 7:13, 7:10, 7:11; 39 sec recovery