A Foot in the Stirrup

Well, I won't go nearly so far as to say that I'm back on the horse yet, but I at least took the step of putting a foot in the stirrup last night. After running 26 min at everyday training pace, Andy and I threw in 4X90 sec pick-ups with 90 sec recovery between followed by a 22 min c-down. It felt good to turn my legs over a bit and it went better than expected. The goal was simply to get under 6 min pace for the first time in 3 months with the idea of waking my legs up and starting to get them prepared for the real work to come. According to the Garmin, the pick-ups were done in the 5:30/mile range, which is obviously not very fast but still well under the goal. My main concern was how I would feel during and after, and I got positive feedback in those areas as well. I felt pretty under control last night and could have gone faster if I'd wanted. In fact, we were talking throughout the pick-ups. Furthermore, I didn't have any aches or pains after, so I'm hoping I'm pretty much good to go. I have a much more significant workout this Friday that will be a bigger test and should tell me for sure where I am in regards to both health and fitness.

I confirmed my suspicion that it will still be pretty easy for me to get my heart rate into the 180's during workouts. Despite the controlled effort, I hit 181 during one of the pick-ups. According to the standard formula, my max should be only around 190 now, but I have a feeling mine is at least 200 and probably even slightly higher. The good thing is the overall average is continuing to come down. We were running 6:50's in our cooldown, and not only did that feel very comfortable and relaxed, but my heart rate was only in the low-150's. I've come a long ways from 2-3 weeks ago when 7:10 pace was putting me in the 160's!

Anyway, it'll still be quite a while before I start thinking about serious workouts and in particular racing, but it sure is nice to be healthy and back at it. Now if we could just get some better weather. These single-digit and below-zero wind chills are wearing on me. There's more than one reason I don't live up North!