Adarq.org

- run 37:46, 6.79km, strides 4 x 100m w/ walking rest
strides in 16-17s. again, pondering the gap between me and cole hocker is just hilarious. my stride pace today translates to a 4:30 mile.

is there a way to use back roads, even if it's significantly longer? the few times i've run-commuted, i can take a slightly longer route that ends up on a paved running/biking trail. much more tolerable than the most direct route.

well, once you introduce RPE and grade adjustments then i think we're not that far apart. what i'm trying to get away from is thinking about pace full stop as the main target measure for a workout. power would be better than HR, i gather, but, as you said, it's not as easily available. but pace+RPE tracks pretty closely to HR for me, i think. interesting point about magness and houston, do you remember which video that's from, or where you read it?

ETA: i'm not going to start pushing on easy runs, more just letting myself run a little bit more by feel rather than constantly checking my watch to make sure HR doesn't creep over 130 or 140. like if i'm climbing and it goes up to 145, that's ok. if i'm descending and it drops into the low 120s, also ok.

- speed intervals
-- warm up
-- 13 x 200m hard, 200m jogging rest
-- cool down
meant to do 12 but lost count, lol. pace was all over the place, anywhere from 3:04 to 3:28, but mostly in the 3:10-3:20 range.

ETA 2: thinking about my times in the context of how hard i was running today just drives home how unbelievably fast the top milers are going, let alone 800 and below. the fastest 200 i ran today was 37.6 seconds, which extrapolates to a 5:01 mile. the top men are doing 28-29s/200m to hit sub-3:50. obviously, this workout didn't make me tired, that wasn't the point. but i know how hard i was running those reps. those dudes are flyyyyying. i genuinely don't know if i could run a 28s 200m. maybe i should try. might be fun to see how fast i can do a few short distances at some point soon. like 200/400/800/mile.

ETA 3: there is an all-comers track meet near me the last weekend in august. hmmmmmmm...........

i was literally about to reply to the opposite effect in your journal, haha. pace is so affected by outside stuff: temperature, humidity, elevation gain, whether you're alone or with others, etc. one day's 5:15 is another day's 5:45; threshold pace on a chilly day or on the track is lower than a hot day or on a hilly route. your body's systems work together to produce pace, and i'm more and more convinced that it's a bad proxy for training load, for that reason. HR isn't ideal, either, but at least it's a measure of something important going on inside your body, rather than an output. speed/interval work could be an exception, but otherwise i'm gonna be focusing on HR.

over the weekend i looked at my last few months of training. coros app gives summaries over different time spans. in the past 16 weeks:

• average mileage: 50.52 km
• total time on feet: 70:39
• distance: 757.83 km
• HR average: 133
• 44% of km run under 133bpm, 36% under 149, 8% 150-158, 10% 159-169, and 2% 17+

takeaways:

• i'm ready to start pushing mileage up. 50kpw is a good baseline for a sub-20 5k, which i've run. and it's a good baseline to start pushing up to the 100+kpw that the plan i'm, uh, planning to follow gets to.
• my easy/hard split is smack on 80/20, which is good. but the easy mileage might even be a little too easy. i think it's worth starting to allow my HR to creep up just a bit on long runs, while leaving recovery runs (i.e., tuesday and thursday and sometimes saturday) very chill. anything up to 149 is in what coros describes as "aerobic endurance" zone. i probably won't push *that* hard, but more try letting HR hover around 140 instead of around 130, as i've been doing.
• summer is coming, so it's really time to start de-emphasizing pace outside of intervals and certain kinds of races.
  
• unrelated but, i need to really start forcing more consistency with strength training. i might bail on the gym membership, i'm not climbing enough to make progress anyway, and use the money saved to pick up a couple of DBs. once my wife and i move again, i'll put up the fingerboard she got me and use that for pull ups. hasn't seemed worth it in this house because we want to leave before it gets cold again.
  
• last but not least, i feel really good: excited about running, itching to sign up for some more races and see how fast i can get.
  

yesterday

- tempo run x 54:42, 11.13 km
-- warm up
-- 20 min @ HR 150-158 (avg pace 4:31)
-- cool down
got rained on during the warm up and cool down, middle part was dry. felt too easy, although HR was bumping up against the top of the target range. probably user error, i.e., me misunderstanding what my watch is telling me. need to switch the different range going forward.

which running backpack did you get?

- run 1:02:08, 11.20 km, strides 4 x 100 w/walking rest
right knee started bothering me just a little on the last stride rep.