Sunday – a nice run (low heart rate!)

Another beautiful sunny autumn day. Maximum temperature around 25 degrees C, no wind. The plan asked for a “recovery cross training” and I knew that today it was going to be my “regular” 12k run from home. I say “regular” because Strava tells me I do this run just a few times per year. Still I consider it as one of my benchmark runs.

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The run starts at home, then goes slightly downhill to the next village, Mokra Hora. There, I leave the hard surface behind and enter the forest. I run along a small stream and continuously climbing with a grade between 0 and 5%, and a few shorter, steeper segments. At “Rakovec” (that is the place I pass twice on this run), a long climb starts. Until this point, I was monitoring my heart rate and let it stay in the 140-150 bpm range. At the climb from Rakovec, I was passed by a group of 5 mountain bikers. The climb has a few steeper segments (up to 15% grade) I started to pass the slower bikers of the group. At the top, I had passed three of the five riders. At the cost of a slightly harder effort and a heart rate in the 160-170 range. But my pride was saved.

Then it’s a quite fast downhill segment, to the village of Oresin, then through Jehnice, and straight on towards the railroad track, which I follow (almost flat) until I hit Brno again.

Twelve kilometers. Average pace 5:30. Average heart rate 141 beats per minute. I did the same run a year ago. It was 10 degrees colder then and my average heart rate was 10 beats higher. Then, the run was classified as “black hole”. Today it was a nice “LIT” (low intensity training).

During the run everything felt effortless. Now, I feel the muscles need a stretch and I will probably have some DOMS tomorrow.

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I have been reading this reddit discussion  with surprise. Apparently, there are triathletes (age groupers) who spend between 100 and 200 USD on a coach who makes their training plan and is available for discussions on progress. I wonder how much of that value I get from writing my blogs and doing training plans myself. I wonder how much of the value I miss because I do stupid things because I don’t have a coach. It’s interesting to think about this. It seems quite a lot to me. I could also say that a few months of rowing without a paid coach will save me enough money to spend on a power measuring oarlock! 🙂

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