Ran out of road

Main aim this evening was to get a run in, just to ease myself back into a routine. Something nice and easy, perhaps like a 30 min run strictly adhering to a HR limit of 160bpm. I made sure I got some shopping done beforehand, so I'd have something to eat when I finished up.

So off I went, nice and easy. Too easy. Still, I stuck with the plan, keeping the HR regulated, even up-hill. I was thinking of just doing 5km but 3km into the run I was feeling good, so figured I'd do my large lap (a little under 7km). When I got to 5km, still figured I was going ok, so figured I'd throw a quick lap in of a local park (probably an extra km).

I was about 35 mins into the run at this stage and it was around this that I started having crazy thoughts..."Hey, this is so easy, how about we go for 1hr 20m". So I altered my route to take in a longer way home. Five minutes later..."sure why not 1hr 30m". Altered the route again. It was actually getting to the point where I was considering an attempt at 2hrs.

So while the HR was kept stable around the 160bpm mark, my splits were slowing rapidly. Guess thats the trade off. Like I say, it was feeling really easy at that HR level. In the end, I ended up doing 13.14km in 1hr 34min. I was contemplating the "100min" mark and also the "2hrs" mark, but common sense prevailed (and I was starting to get hungry).

I'm probably going to play around with the HR thing a little over the next few weeks...shorter runs of up to 30mins, I will probably up the HR limit to 165bpm and see how that goes. For the longer runs, 160bpm seems to be handy enough...it'd be nice to up the pace a little at that HR level, but I guess that'll come with time.