For the past month or so my Sunday run has been in the evening but today we were going to be at a family party and so the run had to be this morning. Rather than dither I went soon after the alarm sounded and ran a slightly shortened version of my Dore road loop. All of it was run gently. The downhill sections to avoid load and the hills to keep my heart rate below my recently self-imposed threshold of 135.
It is clear that when I've done this loop making a bit of effort that my heart rate will have been far higher. The heart rate itself isn't too much of an issue it's more that it is a proxy for effort and repeated high effort leads to overtraining - I think that's where I've been. I think I'm starting to understand the difference between training and race pace and how this fits into long runs and interval runs. It's not all that complex but I've not been doing it well for 18 months. I was following the ethos that I should make an effort on every run and a lot of effort at some points to reach a particular target. That's too much on a regular basis and to a degree I blame Strava for feeding the human need for gold stars. Maybe this is all part of learning to run and the need for many months to become a solid marathon runner.
If it's just this simple it's a pity that I couldn't have learnt this a year ago which would probably have enabled me to reach my 100km goal. Now, with care, I might achieve it in my 50th year.
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