Thursday, October 16, 2008

I Can See for Miles and Miles

On Monday I got the week off to a great start by running 5.1 miles. I rested on Tuesday. On Wednesday I went for a brisk 50 minute walk.

Wednesday I also received two health-related devices I'd ordered through amazon.com; a heart rate and blood pressure monitor. Alas, the blood pressure monitor had a malfunctioning key, so I shipped it back today. Hopefully I'll get it back within the next 8 or 9 days. I measured my blood pressure and was under the guidelines considered normal by the AHA (120/80), averaging 115/70 after several takes. Resting heart rate around 76. I'm happy about these results, and I look forward to monitoring and tracking my blood pressure consistently (with the convenient bundled software) as part of new preventive measures I'm going to build in to my everyday life. The heart rate monitor will also aid in my cardio training.

After the walk allowed me to stretch but not exert yesterday, I felt ready for a little more endurance training today. I ran 6.1 miles in 63 minutes and felt pretty good. My heart rate recovered within about 5 minutes.

Next I'll rest for a few days, and then decide whether I want to continue with endurance or go back to 0.5 mile intervals (which I'm attempting to run in 3:30, as part of my goal to hit 7 minutes for a mile). For the record, I'm estimating it will take me two months of training to get to the 7 minute mile. Right now in my interval training I've hit 0.5 intervals at 3:31 and 3:35, but still not 3:30. This supposes a consistent speed of 8.6 mph for 3:30 and I'm not quite there yet. A few more weeks and I'll make it. After that, I have my sights on the 0.6 interval, and then the 0.7. Sounds trivial, but it's sure making me sweat!

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