I was going to head out for an evening's 5k jog when I noticed the Kevin Spacey movie "K Pax" about to start on the teev. Coincidentally, I had only just a little while before been reading part of Andy's Chicago training diary (for motivation
) where he mentioned seeing the very same movie and he had recommended it, so I stayed home and watched it instead, especially as I am a bit of a Kevin Spacey fan. And a fairly good flick it was too - moderately thought-provoking without being too challenging or weird. 6 or 7 out of 10 anyhow. It helps if you like Spacey of course. Or Jeff Bridges who plays the other main role.
Of course it had nothing to do with running other than a philosophical message about life in general - which in fact means it probably
did have a lot in
common with running even if it wasn't
about running
per se. Which is a very wordy way of saying that it left me inclined to go for my run anyway, which is what I did.
Truth to tell, I do a lot of my running late at night anyway. It's cooler, the streets are far less busy, and it gives you a nice feeling of solitude you can't get running in broad daylight, or so I reckon. And tonight was a lovely night for running. After a quite warm day, it was pleasantly cool with lots of stars and just a gentle gusting breeze cooling me down when I needed it. Perfect!
I have eschewed my original 5km course for a slightly longer one (5.2km)which instead of an uphill start and finish, has one long, gentle 1.3km uphill section in the middle, which I find better, as I don't much like coming home looking like I need an ambulance.
Actually, an ambulance went rushing past with its lights blazing on my run tonight. At least this one didn't slow down to check me out, as happened on another run recently. Terribly rude I thought... I wasn't even struggling at the time.
I took tonight's run quite slowly, as I'm still concentrating on building fitness and endurance, and won't seriously think about speed until I'm back down close to my ideal weight and running some reasonable distances again. I was pleased to feel quite strong however, and my time wasn't too bad (31:36), so in general I'm happy with my progress. Some shin and calf soreness however suggests I need a rest day, which will be easy as tomorrow is Monday, always my busiest day and an easy one in which to not run.
One thing I find a little perplexing is keeping my heart rate down to that 60%-70% of maximum heart rate that all the gurus recommend as being the core level for building endurance. As all the runs around here are hilly, I invariably find that all my runs end up with me averaging over 80% of maximum HR for the run - which is up in the anaerobic region usually associated with interval workouts. Short of actually
walking large parts of my runs, I simply can't keep my heart rate that low. I could go to the local running track, but I find that soul-crushingly boring, and I'm so spoiled with magnificent runs from my front door that I can't bring myself to drive to flatter ground. So I've decided simply not to worry about it and just see what happens. Hills didn't do the Finns or Kenyans any harm, so I'll stick to it too.
I've been fiddling with my heart rate monitor recently and renewed my acquaintance with some features I hadn't availed myself of before. Turns out once you input some crucial data and let it do some tests on you, it can calculate your VO2max for you and also give you a reasonably accurate (not sure how you prove this mind) calorie burn count on your runs. For the record it says my VO2 max is currently 44 (OK but nothing special) and I burned 422 calories on my 5km run tonight.
But why on earth this would be of any interest to anyone else other than me I don't know, so perhaps I should quit before I descend into statistical hell.
It's all those endorphins ... they made me do it
K Pax-ian running
