Thursday tempo time

I felt brave enough to do a tempo workout outside this morning. I feel like my IT band is a lot better and I won't get stuck somewhere far from home.

I left my house and did a warm up from home to Liberty Park. My warm-up was about 2k or 1.23 miles in 12:37 for 10:13/mile average, with a HR of 136. It's downhill, hence the low HR for the speed I was going. Then once I got to the park, I did 2 laps in 13:41 and 13:56 with ave HR of 157 for each lap, and ave speed of 9:37 and 9:47 per mile. Pretty fast! I was pleased with my speed but not so much with the HR - wanted it to be more like 162ish but just didn't seem to have it in me to push that hard this morning. I was going to do 3 laps, but I had 2 problems: 1) I forgot to wear my IT band strap, and though I had no pain, I did notice it was tight. I stopped to stretch after each lap, but decided that 3 laps might be pushing things w/o the IT band strap. I figured I wouldn't regret taking it a little easy to help my recovery. 2) I had some GI distress in the 2nd lap and knew I needed to get home to the restroom. The ones in Liberty Park have been closed of late due to some problems w/drug dealing, which is really annoying because, hey, some of us actually need to use them so we can get a good workout! I'm not sure what the GI stuff was about, but I wonder if I have some sort of bug. I've had problems all day now :( so it's probably a virus rather than the usual thing I sometimes get from racewalking. So, I went home at this point, taking 14:42 to get home (11:41/mile) w/an ave HR of 135 (remember, going home is uphill!). I reached home just in time :).

It was a good workout, even if I did have to cut it short. I like being outside, and my dog Copper enjoyed the fresh air, too (I can't take Sahara on tempo workouts because she can't keep up, but Copper has no problem keeping up w/me).