A bit more like it

Well, after the disappointment of yesterday morning, I felt that there was nothing left for it but to roll up the sleeves and get stuck into the work tonight. Actually, with the 18 hours between sessions my legs felt pretty good. So maybe some of the craptitude of yesterday was residual fatigue from Sunday's long run.

So tonight it was into Yoyogi Park. First up was 7 km at progressively better pace with Jayne and Teruyuki, then Stuart and Keren, starting around 5:20 min/km and finishing at better than 4:40/km. Then it was into the main dish of tonight's menu, 10 km at, well, hard aerobic pace...at least under 4:30 min/km. I ran 1.94 km Fulton loops with Stuart. They went like this:
Time    pace   HRavg
0:8:42  4:21    80%
0:8:31  4:15    82%
0:8:29  4:14    84%
0:8:27  4:14    85%
0:8:19  4:10    87%

Clearly I did not try to maintain a constant heart rate, but just went with the feeling and tried to keep the effort hard, but aerobic, then finish off with a bit of a harder effort.  I remember a series of sessions like this with Colin last year and I think they really give the aerobic fitness a good kick along. A bit hard on the old pegs though. I should note that Stuart, the young fit bugger, pulled away from me on those last couple of laps.

I ran a couple of slower laps and finished with 20.5 km in 1:41:14, average pace of 4:53/km and average heart rate of 76%...and 1413 kcal consumed apparently, according to my heart rate monitor...for what its worth. Actually, my interest in this is up slightly because I discovered a calorie budget program that I am trialling. I might talk about it in more length later.

End result of today: tired but happ(ier).