Rabbit, Rabbit

I was going to kick off the new month by getting up a little earlier than usual to head out for a pre-dawn trail run. That never happened. I hit the snooze button a few times instead and then crawled out of bed when I usually do.

After making coffee and looking at the weather forecast, I was kicking myself a bit. There was no rain at the time and it was unusually warm out. Later today, I would have a meeting which would extend my day and make running a bit more complicated. It would also likely be raining. I thought to myself that I made a dumb move. And perhaps I did, but I decided to make the most of it.

I decided I'd do a tempo-paced run today in lieu of a moderate track workout tomorrow (will run easy tomorrow now instead). This would be easily accomplished by running a mile loop of paved paths and parking lots around my school. It's relatively traffic free making it a bit safer to run at night if need be. Plus, if the weather got too bad, I'd always be within a half a mile of my car.

So, work and the meeting were over and I changed and headed outside the school. It was already approaching sundown and the overcast skies and light rain made it even darker. Despite the long day and dreary weather, I oddly felt energized and anxious to go. I was off and hit my splits in 6:53, 6:51, 6:43, 6:46, 6:35 and while it was work, I felt great. Afterwards, rested for a couple of minutes and then ran a cooldown mile at an easy pace.

I also experimented with wetting the contact points and outer part of my heart rate strap more liberally in an effort to reduce spikes in the data. This helped tremendously (thanks Jeff). In fact, there were zero spikes in the charts, which I was very pleased to see. Something that might have also have helped was I only had on a tech shirt. With my other runs I also had on a windbreaker, and I wonder if the rubbing of the shirt and jacket may have helped create a static charge, especially early in the runs. Time will tell, but today it looked great.

Also, with a wet watch and wet finger tips from the rain, I played with the bezel on the Garmin 410 after the run. Worked fantastic. No issues at all getting it to function. I never owned a 405, but many have complained the bezel didn't work well (or at all) in wet conditions. Garmin added more contact points in the 410 to help fix the issue, and I thought today was a good initial test for that and it passed with flying colors.

Ran 5.0 miles @ 6:46/mile pace.
Ran 1.0 mile cool down @ 8:51/mile pace.
AHR/MHR - 163/180 (doesn't include cooldown run)
Paved roads and paths.
Mostly flat.
Mid 40s, overcast, light rain, breezy.
Brooks Mach 11, shorts, short sleeved shirt, Moeben sleeves, cap.


The drops in the pace about a quarter of the way through each mile were the result of having to slow down to take a very sharp turn to get through a gate during the loop.