Or, maybe, transitioning to a walker!

A problem that I have with things like running is that I want to see continuous improvement – or at worst a plateau. I am finding it hard to motivate myself with my running this week because this isn’t happening.

Over the week, using the HRM for a tempo run and an easy run was fine with paces of 9:28 and 9:35 for 3-4 mile runs. OK, this is slower than I have been going, but I have felt that the HRM was doing it’s job of making me run at the correct pace.

Yesterday I did the “long slow distance” run, which is meant to be at 70% of max heart rate, so it’s going to be slower than the mid-week more intense training. In fact, the first such run was last week at a pace of 10:40 (one of my slowest runs ever, but finishing feeling strong – not knackered). Last week I failed to keep my heart rate at the prescribed rate – this week I thought I’d be able to.

I started off at a casual rate and yet my heart rate didn’t reflect how I felt, shooting up to around 80%, so I had to go slower, even more slower and slower still to get the heart rate down to 70%. I felt I was barely going quicker than a brisk walk. About half way round I got a jeering comment about how slow I was plodding from a car sat in a traffic queue. At this point I am feeling really pissed off, but I continued with the “plan”. I wanted to up the distance to 7 miles this week, but as I was passing a point close to home at nearly 6 miles I thought “sod it”, and gave up. My pace was appalling with a new all-time low of 11:10.

I know that some of this is related to my new training technique of using a HRM, and that I should expect things to go backwards a bit before going forward, but I am so disheartened. What will go first? The HRM? Running?