Three in a row

Today was the third day in a row that I was up for a run with less than seven hours sleep under my belt. After getting back from the airport at getting on for 10:00pm it was time for a snack (fish & a rice ball) and a beer and check emails before getting to bed around 11:30. Set the alarm for 5:30 and managed to prise myself out. I want to run twice today so decided not to head off on the 4-km jaunt to Komazawa park. Instead I set out to run three or four "post-office loops", a 3.3-km circuit course from my home that takes me past Meguro Post Office. At first I was thinking of doing one lap easy, one hard, one easy, one hard. But that just didn't seem very attractive, so I decided to try and run a progressive pace. It went pretty well actually, especially the relatively low heart rate for the pace of the last two laps. All up, 13.3 km in 0:58:45 for an average heart rate of 142 (76%). Here are the lap data:
Lap time Ave pace Ave HR(%max)
0:17:01 0:05:09 123 (66)
0:14:35 0:04:25 140 (75)
0:13:43 0:04:09 151 (81)
0:13:17 0:04:02 158 (85)
It was hard work keeping that kind of pace on the last lap, particularly because a little brown skin diver was knocking on the escape hatch.

Tonight's run will just be an easy 10k. The leg is feeling pretty good, as in not hurting much.