Another Run

Yesterday was another run, 4.5 miles at an average 8:01 pace. Soft trails with a few easy hills. It was warm, probably in the 80s, and I definitely felt the effort at the end. Achilles was OK, there was some discomfort when running anything uphill, especially if I didn't back way off the pace. Feels OK this morning, just a little ache, but not much more than the other leg.

I've been looking at my pace/heart rate for these last 2 runs and comparing to some of my pre-injury trends. The very basic measure I use is average heartrate divided by average speed. At the end of May I was running just under 20. (When I started a year ago, it was around 28). These last two runs were 20.5 and 21.4. This simple measure is the red line on the chart below [lower = better].

Now heartrate/speed doesn't take into account how hilly the course is or how far you run, so I have a more complex formula that includes distance, elevation gain, and average elevation (for running in Tahoe). This is the blue line on the chart below [higher = better]. Pre-injury trend was about 47, with some runs peaking just over 50. These last 2 runs were 41.3 and 43.6, which is about where I was in terms of fitness way back in February.

Neither of these formula take into account temperature, since most of my runs are in the same range. The last two runs were both in the daytime sun when it was at least 80 degrees, so I'm hoping it's not as bad as it looks from these runs.

Overall it looks like I have definitely lost some real fitness, possibly as much as 4 months of training (early Feb to late May) but it's probably too early to tell. After a few weeks I should have a better idea, and of course I'll know for sure after the first race, which is currently planned for September 16th.











Red dots are races, white diamonds are runs at altitude (Tahoe), red shading is injury periods.