Planned run 15 minutes effort

Date: 2 Apr 2010
Time: 14:27 min
Distance: 3.65 km

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/28634714

Pretty good speed run.

I pulled up at 14:27 instead of the full 15 minutes because I ran along the waterfront to meet up with Christine and our new dog. We picked the dog up from the RSPCA dog refuge in Toowoomba ( a town near Brisbane).

We have named him Max, full name Maximum or possibly VO2 MAX ;) . According to the details we got from his carers at RSPCA, Max had a very difficult and cruel start to his life, which makes me both sad and enraged at the same time. He had to be carefully nursed back to health after a severe case of neglect. He was voluntarily surrendered by the owners, after they were threatened with prosecution by animal welfare inspectors.

He is only 1 year old and is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier Cross. He has the Staffy face and head and is a bit taller and slimmer than a typical Staffy. First night with him and he has proven to be wise beyond his years, a perfectly gentle nature and so quiet !! I think so far we have gotten very lucky with Max, he is a perfectly behaved little fellow, and I cannot believe anyone could be cruel to him at all. And he has a perfect trot that will suit a long slow run pace. We won't take him on a run any longer than 50 minutes though - I won't run with him as I think I may be too fast for him over a long run, but Christine will be perfectly suited to take him. We took him on his first long walk with a little bit of running, and he is now snoozing at my feet as I write this :) I think he's pretty happy here to so far.

We recently introduced him to a friend's dog, a smaller female cross. He was an altogether different dog suddenly. Given a bit if time we will have him trained to be better behaved.

Anyway back to running, today I used my foot pod for the second time. I did an average cadence in this speed run of 91spm. That is pretty much spot on what I want to do. For geeky gratification again, I will calculate the stride length:

Distance : 3.65km == 3650 metres
Time : 14:27 == 867 seconds
Cadence : 91 strides per minute == 1.52 strides/second
Number of strides == 1317.84
Distance covered per stride == 2.77metres.

Stride length is 1.38 metres.

My slow run I did a couple of days ago, stride length was 1.22metres

I managed to do 3km in 11min45sec today - better than my last 3km TT where I did 11min56sec. So a tangible improvement again in a period of about three weeks. 11:45 is the fastest 3km I have done.

I do think I can go faster than that as I ran pretty well within my self today. I did not extend or push as hard as I could. I took off faster at 3:47 pace for the first 1km, 3:51 for the next and a 4:05 for the third km. I backed off ever so slightly for the rest of the run, and heart rate dropped by one bpm. Perhaps 4:08 is a maintainable pace for me right now based on the slight recovery of heart rate as I dropped speed.


Cadence did drop gradually over the distance:

1st km - 3:47min/km, 92spm cadence HR 141 av, MAX 159
2nd km - 3:52min/km, 92spm cadence HR 162 av, MAX 164
3rd km - 4:05min/km, 90spm cadence HR 165 av, MAX 166
4th km - 4:08min/km, 89spm cadence HR 164 av, MAX 165


I think if I do a proper warm up for this type of run, get my heart rate up a little and really push I will get below 11:30 for 3kms. I am getting close to 4min/km for 5 km distance too.

This all looks really good, I appear to have an appropriate cadence over a pace run, and a slightly longer stride length. That does not mean I actually stride out more at all, it is just that I travel further for each stride I take due to the higher speed I am moving at. I will revisit using the metronome next week for the speed runs I am scheduled to do, as that will help me in maintaining the consistent cadence.