Seriously. I knew I was in crappy cardio-vascular shape but my run/walk today really surprised me. It was the maiden run with the new stroller, yay! and the first day of my new training program. So I ran the first mile. Time - 8:45. Not great but could have been worse. But the scary part: my h/r at the end was 182. OK, so your maximum h/r is supposed to be 220 minus your age, right? That makes my max h/r 189. Ummm... what happens if you hit it? Do you just keel over on the spot? Obviously that number is just an estimate, but still. Basically I suck, and have a lot of work to do.
Then I walked the rest of the loop. My goal was to keep my h/r between 100 and 120, since 114-ish would be 60%. It took a full 5 minutes of walking very slowly to get down below 125 and it just would not go lower. So not being one to give up, I simply revised my goal to below 125. Hey, that’s fair, right? In order to maintain that rate, I had to walk at less that 2.5 mph for the next mile. By the end of the loop I was up to a slightly more respectable 3 to 3.5 mph., but it really felt like doing NOTHING! I certainly hope that improves over time.
So the summary:
Mile time - 8:45
Average speed – 7.1 mph
Top speed 8.73 mph
Loop time – 46:51
Average speed – 3.87 mph
One point that depresses me slightly: at the end of my first mile, I really pushed and reached a whopping speed of 8.73 mph. If my goal is to run the mile in under 7 minutes, I need to average 8.57 mph. And that, my friends, is not much below my top speed today. A speed I maintained for maybe .05 miles. And nearly died. Yep. I have a lot of work to do.
OK, reading back over that, it sounds a lot more negative than I feel. I’m proud of myself, and feeling pretty good about where I am. I’m just realizing how far I have to go to meet my goals. But as we learned today, goals are made to be revised as needed. ;-) For now, I’ll just see how things go.
