Stick-to-it-ness.

I was able to convince myself to step out the door at 7:00 am this morning, before the threat of rain/snow started. It was 41 degrees, and I think I'm getting the hang of this dressing-for-the-cold thing. I was comfortable. I had a sinus headache, so I cheated a little, and took an Advil Cold and Sinus about 30 minutes before I ran. I can swear that stuff is like high octane to me. So, with drugs in my system, including a cup of coffee, and my headache waning - out I went. I was doing my 24 minute miCoach run. 5 minutes in zone 'blue' , 14 minutes in zone 'green', followed by 5 minutes of zone 'blue' again.
 Here is a description:

These were determined by the assessment run I took the day after I ran the OB Turkey Trot, and also after imbibing on alcohol and sugar instead of real, live food. The blue is my 'easy' effort, where I build my aerobic base and recovery,  green is 'medium' which extends my endurance and where I burn the most calories, yellow 'hard' for cardiac strength, and red 'maximum' for power and speed, or, 'arrhythmia leading to cardiac death', as far as I'm concerned. 

Whereas the 40 minute run I did on Sunday totally did me in, to the point where I couldn't finish and only achieved 44% effort- I rallied today and achieved an 82% - I managed to really stay in the green zone for a longer period of time, with less straying back into the blue zone. I also did not walk today. Love that pseudoephedrine.

Training this way is supposed to build my recognition and subjective feel of my pace, and condition me to stay steady on that pace at any given time. I'm supposed to be able to have more control - (less apt to starting out too fast) and to anticipate managing my comfort level better. I sure hope it pans out.

I don't know how to link to my account publicly, so here is the graph for today.

You can see that I tend to periodically drift into zones I shouldn't be in. I'm hoping using this program will change that. The verbal coaching is exactly what I've been looking for. That dip at 2 minutes I think was the GPS dropping out, because I did not stop once. I also slowed down a few times to cross the street and turn, so those could be some of the dips in the green zone. (edit - yes, those were the points where I slowed to cross the street and head the opposite way, 3 times.)
I'm wondering if I should ask for the proprietary heart monitor and cadence pod from Santa, but I really should be saving for a treadmill.

My next 5k is coming up this Saturday already, so my last run until then will be Thursday, which will be 30 minutes. This run takes me into the 'yellow' zone for 5 minutes. Good lord.

Today's Run

TPP