Hurricane Running

Well, not quite that dramatic. There is an intense low pressure cell out in the Japan Sea directing bucket loads of rain over us at the moment. In Australia we call them cyclones, in Japan they are typhoons, and in America, as we all know, they are called hurricanes. Since we don't have much wind to speak of, it is not really a major problem for running, but one of my non-English-speaking office-mates accused me this morning of "Hurricane Running". It was nice of him to try and adopt the non-Japanese term, even though it sounded a couple of orders of magnitude more dramatic than it really was.

I've missed logging a few runs, so here they are

Wednesday 4th
6 km easy in the morning with some core exercises thrown in.
20.5 km in the evening in 1:39:12. Average pace 4:48, average heart rate 139. About 11 km was at upper aerobic kind of pace and I cranked out 2 km at 4:14/km for a heart rate of 155. Not bad, but not super great. When I am running 4:10/km at HR 150, and holding it there, then I'll be happy ;-)

Thursday 5th
Ran home from the office in the rain: 10.7 km at an easy old average of 5:25/km. Some was much slower and parts were strong and steady, but I never really exerted myself and felt as fresh as a daisy once I was out of the shower. Slept well though.

Friday 6th (today)
Ran to work plus 5 laps of the Gaien picture gallery loop (1.325 km). Mostly I ran easy/steady on the commute sections, lower to mid 130s heart rate. But I chucked in a couple of short pickups along Higashi Gaien Dori and up the hill in Aoyama Cemetary. At the picture gallery I stashed my backpack and ran at a target heart rate of 148-150. Pretty much the same as last week. Let's compare the numbers:
Last week: 5:38, 5:48, 5:51, 5:57, nil
This week: 5:54, 5:50, 5:48, 5:48, 5:53

I took a bit longer to get wound up this morning, so the first lap doesn't mean anything (average heart rate was only 137). After that though, the numbers are comparable as my average heart rate today ranged from 146 (third lap) to 150 (fourth lap). So while I didn't control the heart rate quite as carefully as last week, there are signs of improvement. Certainly faster towards the end and at, if anything, a slightly lower heart rate. So, little by little I think the improvement is coming.

I think that gets to me about 69 km for the week thus far. The body seems to be holding up alright, so the forecast would have to be for about 115 km by lunchtime on Sunday.