Heart Rate Training Progress

Oh hai there....  Remember me?  I think I used to blog over here.  Once upon a time anyway.  My life has been a bit hectic.  School has gotten super time consuming, and my mileage is creeping up ever so gently (or not gently at all, whichever perspective you want to take.  I'll take #2).  Anyway, tonight I had an easy 5 spot on the schedule and thought to myself, "self?  Why don't you do a heart rate test to see what sort of progress you've made?"  To which I replied, "self, you're a genius.  And might I add, you look dashing today?"  "You may."  And then I admitted myself to the psych ward for carrying on a conversation with myself.  Jk, I talk to myself frequently.

Last time (and only time) I did this HR test was December 15th.  I really didn't know what to expect.  The test was to do 1 mile trying to keep my average HR as close to 140 as possible, then take 90 seconds of rest, than another at 150, and so on until 180.  And then I'm done.  Or I perish.  One of the two.  Last time, luckily for me, I was just done.  My previous results:

Yeah that's right, I busted out spreadsheets for you guys.  (Or I just really love spreadsheets, whatev.)  What I noted about this test was that the first two miles were really REALLY tough.  No matter how slow I went, I couldn't get my HR down to where it was supposed to be, as you can tell by my average HR numbers.

Now tonight my plan was to start at the pace that I ran for the last HR test, and up the speed if necessary after my HR "settled."  I know that my HR is all over the place for the first 5-7 minutes that I run, ALWAYS, we're talking like crazy pants 170-180 sometimes on a 9:30-10 pace run.  It's so weird, and then levels out to 140s-150s without batting an eyelash, you know... if my heart had eyelashes.  Eew, that'd be gross.

Anyway, my results for tonight:

First thing I noticed was how much easier those first two miles were.  And how much more of a "normal" pace they were.  I've had a lot of runs lately that have been in the 140s, and am really starting to dig my legit recovery runs, because ZOMG YOU FEEL LIKE YOU COULD RUN FOREVER.  Ahem, I'm guessing that's the point of that pace.  Derpy derpy derp.  Anyway, beyond those first two miles, I didn't expect too much of a difference because I haven't really been doing any training outside of the 140-155 range, except for the occasional tempo run, or MP miles in a LR.  But I was shocked at how much faster those miles were too.  

And another small spreadsheet for comparison sake in team green glory:

Since I'm a very competitive person (primarily with myself) it really helps to motivate me to keep training to see progress like this.  I like to see proof that what I'm doing is working and making me a better runner.  And since Pfitz really just calls for a lot of general aerobic endurance based running for the first loooooooooooong weeks of the training program, it's hard to convince my feeble mind that I'm getting better.  And don't even get me started on how far off in the future my next race is.  Because I'm not even sure... April?  I might die before then.  Here lies Jerbear.  Someone should've signed her up for a g.d. race already.  Damn that Pfitz character.  And then there'll be an LOL Cat epitaph for me, except it'll be a pug, and it'll say, Meester Pfitzzzz why no racez til 3rd mezocycle?!!? You KEELED HER!

Omg, I'm literally giggling outloud, that was so not funny, but is really funny because I'm really tired, and I feel like it's been a long time since I've written something that could have a sliver of funny to it.  So please enjoy.  And I will enjoy not having to site this blog post with APA citations.  Deal?  Deal.

On to fun things.  Although to be honest, I really think the above data are fun because I'm a dork, this past weekend KK and I headed to Minneapolis for a weekend getaway.  I had a cutback week from running and he had the weekend off from work (rare) without a fishing trip on the schedule (even rarer).  To let you know how rare it is for us to both NOT be busy on a weekend, we've been together for almost 14 months and this is the first time we've gone away on the weekend.  Go us.  We'll stay in this honeymoon stage forever since we see each other 16 seconds a day.

We went up with no real plan, and it was great.  En route to the cities, I played super awesome navigational assistance, aka find all the random things in my car and document them with photos.  Such as:  a peacock feather

and a tiara.

Princess Jerbear.  Duh.

We stayed at one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed at.  I tend to be that girl that convinces everyone we should stay at the 17 cent/night motel where you run the risk of getting shanked in your sleep, to save money.  Ask my friends when I was in charge of hotel accommodations in Lincoln.  I still think we're lucky to have made it out of there alive.  Back on track, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a place to stay downtown.  Spendy for my cheapskate self, but fairly cheap as far as downtown options go.  Parking was horrendous, however.  $30/day?  Eat my shorts.  We parked about a half mile away and walked (and still ended up at $12-15/day, uff!).

We ate a lot of great food, and did some monster shopping, and just enjoyed each other's company (for the most part).  Interesting fun fact:  Kyle is NOT Magellan.  Sweet Louisiana, is that kid directionally challenged.  I don't mean to go all gender role controversy here, but it's fairly typical for men to be great with directions and women to not be as great.  Whether that be because it's taught to them or if their brains work differently in that regard, whatever, debate as you wish, I may believe a bit of both.  Anyway, I happen to pride myself on being pretty g.d. good with directions.  As long as I'm not driving.  Oh my goodness, if you want to see Jerbear have a panic attack have her drive somewhere that she's not familiar with while trying to utilize a map.  One thing at a time PLEASE.  Let's just say that a few navigational fights were had throughout the weekend.  Except for the time that we walked out of a bagel shop no more than 5 minutes after walking in it, Kyle started walking in the direction we just came from.  Then I just laughed hysterically because I mean.. come on!  Poor kid.  Someone put him back on a tractor.  Sheesh!  (jk, he's not a farm kid.  i just like to pretend like I'm some big city girl compared to him... except I grew up in the tiniest farm town in SoDak.  Jokes on me I guess!)

We hit up some great outlet malls to the north of the cities, and luckily for us, things were even MORE on sale because of President's Day weekend.  Oh man.  There was a line of about 40 people waiting outside of Coach and I decided I didn't need to go in.  But then Kyle said he'd wait with me... so I did.  And ooops, this sparkly thing just had to come home with me.  72% off?!  Why don't you just pay me to have it?!  No seriously.  You can pay me.  Coach.  My contact info is on the side.

And I may have done some damage at the Nike outlet.  Oops.  Including my possible Brookings Marathon sub 4 outfit.

How adorable is this jacket?!?!

Also, please don't mind the toothpaste spatter on the mirror.  I don't even want to tell you how far down the list of importance cleaning that thing has fallen (hint:  much farther than blogging which seems to happen once a week now).

So I think that's all the recap I have.  I have a big 18 this weekend, and we just got 6-7" of snow, so we'll see how quickly that melts away, I'd really prefer not to spend that long on the treadmill this weekend.  Barf.

Oh and before I forgot, Kyle drug me to Cabela's this weekend.  To be fair, he did have to wait 20 minutes to get in Coach, and THEN had to put up with me looking around with 50 other crazed shoppers, so YEAH I can look at some dead animal mounts and fishing lures for awhile I SUPPOSE.  Anyway, on the way out, I saw this on the wall, and wanted to see if they needed a librarian!

Again guys... my jokes are getting more and more AWESOME.... be concerned.