April 2nd 2019

Today the guy I went for a run with said to me at the end “You’ve still got speed in your legs and puff in your lungs, haven’t you?” and, like, yeah I did. We did Tempo Tuesday™wherein we ran at “Tempo” pace on a “Tuesday” — do you see how that works?

It was basically around 6 kilometres at 4:30 min/km pace. It’s slower than race pace but faster than we’d normally do a generic lunchtime run. The point is to put your heartrate into, like… an anaerobic heart rate zone three? Or something? To be honest, I don’t completely understand the whole thing. I just run as far as I’m told to as fast as I’m told to.

And apparently, I could ran further and faster. Because Steve was right, I still had speed in my legs and puff in my lungs. He tells me that now I’ve beaten a twenty minute 5km that I should easily be beating a 19 minute 5km.

So I guess one day I’ll try that.

I don’t really look into heart rate zones, or VO2 MAX, or cadence, or gait, or anything like that when it comes to running. I just run. But maybe if I considered the science of it a bit more then I would be a better and a faster runner. Or maybe it would take all the fun out of it.

Because I like just bounding out of the door and sprinting as fast as I can in one aimless direction. And I like that at certain points when I’m running fast, my mind is completely blank. And I have nothing to think about. Counting breaths and steps per minute would ruin that slightly, I think.

Until tomorrow, just keep running.

Jacn