At parkrun last Saturday , it was HOT!!! . However, I felt good and had largely gotten over my post HM "blehs" and felt like a good run. I started out with a fellow runner in my age group ( but he is faster than me) - and crashed and burned at the 4Klm mark. I walked for a while , recovered and finished fairly strongly. But , when I got home, I looked at a trace of my heart rate during the 4K's and it became obvious to me why I had crashed. I had run the first 4K of parkrun at over 92% of my max HR.
Now - that was ridiculous and is not what I want to do or what I started out to do when I first started to run. My pace over that 4K was actually over a minute slower than my parkrun PB and dropped lower over each one klm , in spite of my HR remaining the same.
I am not really one of those people who are keen to improve pace times- and have publicly stated that here many times. But - somehow I have been sucked in by this prevailing ethos at parkrun. Yesterday, I had a good hard run - I used my HRM to run some 400 metre fartleks - ran until my HR reached around 90% and then slowly jogged until it came back to an easy 70% . Did this a few times and felt quite pleased with the workout . I have no idea what pace I did - and am not interested!!! This is what I am going to do from now on -- use my HRM to control my running and enjoy the fitness that this brings me (which is really the reason why I run)
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
