One More Race This Year

The White Rose Five Miler in York is only eleven days away.  My last five training sessions have been exclusively long runs. Each session was eight miles on a tough, hilly course. Because this is a tough run for me to accomplish, I needed more than one day to recover between these runs.

In fact I needed three days of rest in between my eight mile runs.  The one occasion where I only rested two days between the eight miles runs is when I had my worst outing - because my legs were still tired. If I would follow an eight mile training session with a run of a shorter distance, say three to five miles, I would not need a full three days rest.

I imagine there are people who run eight miles several times a week - I am not currently capable of running that much with that frequency. I know these runs have made me a stronger runner because I have been able to climb the hills within this run much more aggressively. My legs feel stronger.

Upon reviewing my heart rate for my last run I noticed some abnormal activity beginning roughly five  miles into the run.  My heart rate (in beats per minute) begins to vacillate markedly.  At the beginning of the seventh mile there is a very large hill to climb. For whatever reason, my heart began to slow down appreciably.  I slowed at the hill, took much smaller footsteps, and began breathing much deeper in an effort to conserve energy while climbing the hill.