Afternoon Run - 9km (new shoes and an update on training)

dannewton just finished a 9.3km run, that lasted for 58 minutes.
This run helped dannewton burn 701.0 calories.

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Description from Strava:

I didn't buy 3 pairs of new shoes.... don't panic, I'm not that extravagant!

The Navy Blue ones on the left are my current shoes, the grey ones on the right are the old shoes. And the electric green at the top are the brand new ones.

You'll notice they are all New Balance, 'cos my first ever pair of running shoes I bought 20 years ago were New Balance. They've always fitted well, always felt comfortable, and it never occurred to me that I should try another brand!

There's a hold load of advertising and marketing that goes into selling running shoes, and I reckon it's mostly a load of guff.

So many people swapping and changing shoes in an effort to run faster and perform better... and I would argue that finding a shoe that is comfortable helps me to perform at my best

Alright, alright, I'll stop grumbling now!

The grey ones are 680's, the blue ones are 880's and the green ones' are also 880's as they are super comfortable, so why risk changing to something different?

Why do I have 3 pairs of shoes? Quite simple really, shoes don't last forever. At some point in their 'life' they will lose performance, the soles will compress and the grip will wear down. And instead of having 1 pair of shoes, running them into the ground, and then replacing them with a brand new pair, I can now rotate them between different sessions. The grey ones have logged early 700km, ad the blue ones are quickly approaching 500km. It's a good idea to start thinking about replacements now, and then I can ease them in to the rotation.

The blue ones are the current workhorse, the Grey ones have probably another 200km in them, and at some point I will include the new Green ones in.

And on race day I will then chose which ever pair of shoes are newest

It also depends on the weather. If I know I'm gonna get soaked then I might chose an older pair of shoes and save the new pair. Or if I get soaked unexpectedly then the following day I can put on dry shoes and let the wet ones dry thoroughly.

The shoes arrived today, and I almost put them on for tonight's run, but the threat of rain put me off haha! I'll wait for a nice dry day to go out on my maiden run

Speaking of my run... once again it was Monday, so once again it was the standard 9km out and back along the bypass. Considering the 15 miles I ran on Saturday, and the 3.5 miles I ran on Sunday, the 5.5 miles I ran tonight felt really good. I actually felt like I was running today instead of just jogging or plodding, and there was an obvious 'spring' in my step.

I've spoken a couple of times about the whole 'low heart rate training' thing, and that the aim of it is to spend more time running at an 'easy' pace. This means the heart gets used to working at those lower heart rate levels, and the result of that is the ability to increase the workload at the same exercise intensity

i.e. in theory this means I can increase my pace while working at that lower intensity, and that will improve my running performance.

You can see the effect of this in the two graphs below

In the top one it shows my a series of data points. The first half are all quite similar times, but in these my effort was 150-165 bpm. When I started the low hear rate stuff, my pace plummeted to that low point on the 14th August. I was trying to stay between 135 and 146 bpm, ad I had no option but to slow down.

Its taken a bit of patience, but I'm pleased to see the results starting to appear. Gradually my pace is returning to what I was doing previously, but I'm still keeping my hear rate low, so comparatively speaking I'm finding it easier to match the original pace.

This one is one of the segments on Strava (a segment is like a time trial between 2 points) and again you can see the same trend. There was a huge drop off in performance, but over time my pace has returned to almost a similar level, but I'm running much easier, much more relaxed this time around.

The hope of keeping this up is I will soon be able to run faster than before, and still keep things easy. And in this way I will be able to see a marked improvement in my running performance

Speedwork will also be required, I guess I need to start including them at some point soon!

This post was longer than expected, so well done if you managed to read all of it!

So yeah - TL;DR, I'm looking forward to using nice shiny new shoes soon, and my training is going from strength to strength. I'm gonna take a well earned rest day tomorrow, and then we'll see what Wednesday brings :-)

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If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/9962870381

About the Athlete: Living in the UK, I am an intermittent Runner, but always striving for more consistency. When I'm not training I can be found photographing insects or listening to really loud angry music (which is the best type of music obviously!)

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