3.8mi, 35:48

The Cure, "Lament"
Hilary Duff, "The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room" (something I attribute to my wife's most recent CD purchase)
various songs from the PBS cartoon Dragon Tales

WX at 0700:77/25, RH 75/24, BP 29.84/1010, winds SE 9, RH 94%

Odometer 1: 81mi

Z1 in intent, Z1 in execution, Z1 in feeling.

I'm sure two consecutive gangbuster days were going to come to roost, and it did today. Slow, slow, slow. On the other hand, I've put a new battery in my Polar heart monitor (which I hadn't used in about 3 years) and I knew I wasn't overexerting myself.

Also particularly notable was today's temperature, which was about 10 degrees higher than yesterday. That's probably another reason why today was an exercise in suck. Typically my best speeds are during the late fall when the temperature sits around 50 degrees. My fastest long run ever was the 1990 Charlottesville Ten Miler, which was at 38 degrees with residual ice and slush on the ground. I don't like running in high humidity and heat.

I've found a heart monitor particularly useful in two ways:
1. When you have easy days, if you don't go over a certain heart rate, you're doing the right thing and not going too hard on an easy day. If you're actually disciplined and run easy/hard the right way (unlike what I've been doing lately) then it works.
2. There have been times that I felt like a complete weenie and thought I was working a lot harder than I actually was. I remember one particular run I did where I was doing fartlek intervals with a friend. I thought I was killing myself, but the 180 heart rate said otherwise. I wasn't working THAT hard if the heart rate during those intervals was only 180.

Only split today was at the 1.4: 14:15