Take it outside

With a couple of night assignments today I had no choice but to brave the cold before work. It was 21 degrees, but no wind. And thanks to a recent thaw there was some pavement to spare.

That pavement led me to Labonte Park, a pond-centered green space around the corner from my house. There's an asphalt path around the perimeter of one side of the park, and a city sign at one corner of the park says "One lap = .623 miles," or .002 of a mile longer than one kilometer. That's the distance between two young cottonwoods on the north side of the park along Shields, a good place to begin and end my intervals.

I jogged 1.6 miles for a warmup and dove right in. The workout was 3x1km at 10k race pace; for me, that's around 4:20. I ran them in 4:20, 4:13 and 4:27 with about a half-lap jog between each repeat. Here I was hoping the monitor would tell me what my heart was doing on each rep but I just now noticed that's not the case. Still, it does say I maxed at 181 beats a minute, four beats short of my max, which would have been exceeded easily a week ago.

Point here, through all the technical jargon, I'm getting in shape. I'm not saying I wasn't winded this morning, but my body is starting to accept the task at hand -- altitude, weather, training intensity, end goal. It should be a trip down memory lane for my heart and lungs, and the coming weeks will reveal what they remember and how to process it.