First run in over two months

And so today I managed to get out of the apartment and onto the seafront. It was also the first time that I used my new Garmin.

I purchased a new watch because I wanted to see if I could do better with a heart-rate monitor. I was not wrong.



Normally I run with only an eye on pace (and an ear on my tiredness.) However, I could be trying hard, and feeling like I'm not running as hard as a I should be. This is almost akin to the reading efforts of my students. We can measure their reading ages, and some read masses and hardly improve them. But reading ages, like pace achieved, does not tell the entire story. A month might have been a difficult reading month (they happen!) A student may work hard even though they don't achieve.

Although society may not be bothered about this condition, for the mental health of a student it is useful to be at the very least conscious of the importance of praising personal effort. Therefore, to be able to set the students a target on the physical amount read (against their prior attainment) is a very useful ability.

In the same way, to be able to see my running heart rate against its target is useful too. What is the point in burning out sub 7 minute miles when my heart rate is over 180? It cannot be sustained. My maximum heart rate should be, according to this site, 188 BPM.

And, according this calculator http://www.runnersweb.com/running/hr_calculator_new.html, I should be running between 144 and 161 for an easy run, and 172 and 177 for a hard run.

What is the upshot of this? I think that I need to start slower than I ever thought before! And to somehow begin to make a training programme.