Good morning! I managed a decent heart rate with an improved pace. And I ran one of my favorite routes.

My slowest pace this year. But that’s to be expected. I took a route with steeper hills than I’ve been used to tackling. Also maintained a lower average heart rate. And I only hit 161 a couple of times on some steep inclines. So, all in all, I’m happy with this run.

My pace was down. But my heart rate was in the range I like. I didn’t have the best night’s sleep, which explains my lower speed. But I’m okay with that. At this point, I’m looking to just put effort into maintaining an exercise routine. I’ll let the benefits be secondary.

I am pleasantly surprised by my heart rate. I managed my lowest max rate so far since resuming the marathon.

This is from last week. Just catching up on posting my runs.

*Incremental Marathon

My heart rate was much better than the last run. I peaked at 162 towards the end but managed an overall average of 151. So, yes, a vast improvement over last week’s run.

My heart rate was through the roof! My average was 162. However, I hit 172 several times at the end. But what did I expect? I haven’t run since February 19th! Thirty seven days without running. And I felt it!

Without elaborating too much, I am going to say I managed three runs this week. Forty-five minutes on Monday, and 30 minutes Wednesday and this morning. Feeling pretty good about them – no exhaustion or out-of-the-ordinary tightness that existed before I received the vaccine.

I have hope.

Okay, since writing my long post the other day, I’ve managed to get two workouts in. The first one on Monday was 45 minutes long. The one today was for 30 minutes. Again, nothing great on my speed or distance. But that is to be expected. I weighed myself today for the first time in a long time: 238 pounds. It’s about the heaviest I have weighed in years. It’s not the heaviest I have ever been – that was close to 250 pounds.

Anyway, despite the weight, I felt good during both workouts, and there was no exhaustion afterward.

And on the schoolwork front – I’m gaining ground already.

I decided to do my run on the treadmill in the basement. There’s just too much slush on the sidewalks and roads. Plus, there’s a lot of traffic this time of day. Finally, it’s dark. I am not in the mood to get hit by a car. My stats may seem off, but I ran with the incline set at 2.

I used my Withings Steel HR watch. It’s not a full-fledged Smart Watch. But it does monitor heart rate (hence the HR), and in conjunction with my iPhone, does GPS. Now, my Strava app is not able to directly link with the Withings watch. However, I can link the Withings Health Mate app to the Strava app. As a result, I get both apps posting my run online!

There is one irritating aspect of the Health mate app – it doesn’t seem to track my heart rate. And yet, the Strava app had my heart rate information. It really doesn’t matter all that much. Strava has a better website that gives me HTML code for posting my map. Withings doesn’t appear to do so.