Day 35

My knee felt great this morning, so after the rain stopped, I decided to go for a short and slow run to test it out. I drove down to the Jordan River Parkway for a run so that I could still run on asphalt instead of concrete, but without the crown that streets have. I started out my first mile at a 10:35 pace, so I slowed it down and was at 11:12 for my 2nd mile which should have been about right. Then, letting my competitiveness kick in, I started thinking that was too slow and I kicked it up for my last mile and finished the last mile in 10:38. I hadn't been watching my heart rate much though and was shocked to see that in the last mile, it reached 192 bpm (my supposed max heart rate calculates to 191 bpm). While I was certainly pushing it, I didn't feel like I was giving it my maximum effort. Luckily, my knee still feels great, so the run was a success although I went faster than I should have. I am going to ease back into my training schedule now, giving myself a rest day tomorrow, though I may change the view on my watch and replace the larger pace field with my heart rate for a little while and not worry about pace at all. This does make me want to calculate my max heart rate more accurately by running hill repeats to push it as high as I can, but I am going to wait until after the marathon for that.

My final stats were 3.00 miles in 32:28 for an average pace of 10:48/mile. My average heart rate was 177 bpm.