My 8K Ahem Race and End of Training Plan

My throat finally quit hurting, but I was waiting for the humidity to drop before I tried to run my 10K "race" to finish up my 3 month training plan.  Well, on Wednesday, the humidity dropped from 99% to 98% so I went for it.

Distance: 5 miles
Pace: 10:30 min/mile
Avg Heart Rate: 174 bpm

Fear of rain caused me to turn my 10K into an 8K.  I was pushing a stroller, and I tried not to look at my heart rate for the entire time.  At the 3 mile mark, I tried to push myself a bit harder. This is about what I would expect for a 5 mile run where I pushed myself based on the paces from my hard runs.

Here are all of the stats for my 3 month training plan so you can see the trends:

5K Pre Training Plan:
Distance: 3 miles
Page: 10:49 min/mile
Avg Heart Rate: 184 bpm

Week 1 Paces:
3 Mile Easy Run - 15:02 minute mile
1 Mile Hard Run - 11:13 minute mile

Week 4 Paces:
3 Mile Easy Run - 13:48 minute mile
Hard Run Intervals - 14:46 minute mile

Week 8 Paces:
5 Mile Easy Run - 12:40 minute mile
3 Mile Hard Run - 11:00 minute mile

Week 12 Paces:
5 Mile Easy Run -  12: 33 minute mile
3 Mile Hard Run -  10: 27 minute mile

As you can see, there is plenty of improvement.  As you can also see, the hard runs are too slow for my liking.  I am considering contacting the author of the book to see if he has any comments.  It would be nice of him to say, you need to exercise at a much higher heart rate.  I can see that now.  Bwah ha.  I guess I will give up on my hopes of being an elite runner.  Kidding..I never had those dreams.  WNBA, yes.  Olympic gymnast, yes

Other than that, I have to decide what to do next.  I can:

A. Sit on the couch
B. Sign up for a race and run as fast as I want to while training
C. Try to get back into weight training and still run a few times a week

Decisions, decisions. 



Related Posts:
Heart Monitor Training - Why Am I Trying It?
Heart Monitor Training - Part 1 - Max Heart Rate
Heart Monitor Training - Part 2 - Resting Heart Rate 
Heart Monitor Training - Part 3 - Hard vs Easy Runs
Heart Monitor Training - 1 Month Update 
Heart Monitor Training - 2 Month Update