Ups and Downs

On thursday I twisted my ankle/heel on the edge of the pavement. It didn't bother me too much then other than a sharp pain, but I could finish the run, I completely forgot about it. Then that night it flared up so badly it woke me up and I couldn't sleep anymore with the pain. I could barely put any weight on it in the morning, but by evening friday it was almost completely gone. That morning I honestly thought I may have a stress fracture. I took a few days off of running and it's completely gone, big big PHEW!!!

Yesterday I had an awesome run. I did another "benchmark" workout from Chuckie. I've figured out my LTHR in the past and from what I read this number shouldn't really ever change, even as your fitness changes. It's a misconception, one maybe some of you will not believe, but it's true. Once you find your LTHR(Lactate Threshold Heart Rate) and it's accurate(maybe tested a few times) it should never change. As you get more fit you'll be able to go faster but the way I understand it is that your heart still runs out of oxygen and you start storing Lactic Acid at around the same Heart Rate. Anyways my LT is 168 so for the test I'm to run 5 miles sticking at 90% of this which would be 151 bpm for me. Sounds tough but it's not actually too bad. I did the test and could really have kept runnning at the same pace for a while longer. I had wanted to do it on the track at the Talisman, but when I got there I saw the track was reserved. Aughhhh that's frustrating, oh well I'll have to use the tready for it. Not sure if the results would be as accurate, but I got a damn good run out of it. One surprising thing was that my pace basically stayed the same, it's supposed to kind of tail off because of dehydration. The good thing about the treadmill is I could keep within a beat of the 151 target. It might be harder to keep the same pace on the track. Did the 5 miles in 34:46, it's like a comfortable hard, if that makes sense. Here are the mile splits;

1 - 6:44 (had to crank it up to like 9.4mph at first to get the heart rate up quick, then dialed it back to 8.4-8.7 for the rest of the run)
2 - 6:59
3 - 7:01
4 - 6:59
5 - 7:00


In other news I've been able to do a few morning rides this week, I'm really pumped about that. I just need to go to bed earlier and it helps a lot to make sure the house is warm when I wake up, easier to get up. My new trainer should be here soon soon, I'm still riding the borrowed one. I bought a skewer that's round so I can clamp my bike in properly with out it leaning as much. I had no idea they made these things specifically for the trainer, the one I bought is made by tacx(a trainer manufacturer). Cheers,

DP