Racing Against the Clock

Last night, I had to charge my MP3 player. To do so, I use the same cable that I use to charge my Garmin (you can already see where this one's going). So I unplugged my Garmin and plugged in my MP3 player. This should not have been a problem, had I thought to turn my Garmin off when I unplugged it. But I didn't. So I woke up this morning to the "low battery" message on my Garmin. I plugged it in while I got ready for my run, hoping that it would provide just enough juice to get me through this morning's 6-miler. I checked it regularly over the course of my run, and every time I looked, it was indeed tracking me. Back at the car, I looked again, and fortunately, it stayed alive for my entire run.

I was happy with this morning's pace. One of my goals this morning was to keep my pace from dropping as I went ran my 5th mile. Mile 5 on my out-and-back on the Creek Turnpike is the section between 161st (Wal Mart) and 177th (not sure of the Broken Arrow name equivalents). There is a 79 ft. (~8 house stories) net gain that occurs over a relatively short section of the path. When I hit it on my return, I am headed west right into it. This elevation is one of the primary reasons I have shifted my running path to 145th starting east. I want to get to where running it requires less and less effort. I was able to maintain my pace, but my heart rate did jump a decent amount as a result of the section (and my speed dropped .1 MPH). Something to work on. As I hit this elevation, I normally think about the hills in OKC, and one particularly nasty hill I remember that immediately follows a pretty sharp right turn in the middle of a neighborhood, relatively early in the race. I remember hitting it last year. It sapped my strength pretty good. I hope to be better prepared for it this year.

This past week's runs (Monday, Wednesday, and today) have been pretty uneventful. This past Saturday, I decided to forgo the Poker Run, and I just did my own thing--11 miles to the Harvard hill and back. I ended up with an 8:13 pace for the 11 miles, which made me happy. If I could just stretch that pace across 26 miles!

Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 667 ft Location: Broken Arrow, OK Elev. Gain: +3 ft Date: 02/18/10 Up/Downhill: [+508/-505] Time: 05:46 AM Difficulty: 3.9 / 5.0 Weather: Fair 25 F temp; 80% humidity 25 F heat index; winds Calm Performance Distance: 6.41 miles Time: 0:51:52 Speed: 7.4 mph Pace: 8' 05 /mi Heart Rate: 156 bpm (Avg) Calories: 760 190 bpm (Peak) Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Elevation Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 8' 10 +0' 05 7.3 -0.1 +13 ft 2 8' 14 +0' 09 7.3 -0.1 -19 ft 3 8' 09 +0' 04 7.4 -0.1 -39 ft 4 8' 09 +0' 04 7.3 -0.1 -7 ft 5 8' 09 +0' 04 7.4 -0.1 +79 ft 6 7' 53 -0' 12 7.6 +0.2 -26 ft end 7' 44 -0' 21 7.8 +0.3 +3 ft Versus average of 8' 05 min/mile

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