Putting all the rhubarb about heart rate monitors in watches behind me, I decided to see if I can start on JuJu's plan this week. Tuesday doing 2.5K was OK, but that was the day of the watch-glitch. Today I set out to find a good route for 5.5K by extending my consolidation route which is 4K.
I started by running up to a local farm, it's a slight rise of 20 meters over 1K, so a nice gradient up, and even nicer down again. Back past the house, I joined my usual run down towards Lake Bassenthwaite, then turned south. I have been putting this off as a route as it is very up and down, but in the end it wasn't too bad, and then I turned off into a green lane most of which has recently been relaid with gravel. This was also a new route for me running, but it was very pleasant, and the 5K mark came up as I neared the end of the loop back. So all I had to do was run that extra 500 meters, and walk home.
All in all, a really good run for me, and my personal best distance, probably ever, as I don't remember a run this long at school, 50 years ago. I was aiming to take 45 minutes, but in the end the watch says 42.1 which is 7.3/Km. The watch says my heart rate peaked at 160bpm, which will be treated with scepticism, but for most of the run it was between 130 and 140, and that is what I would expect. I managed to control my starting cadence to 150 spm by using a metronome app on the phone, but the noise started to annoy me, but the watch says I stayed under 155, which was my objective (slow is happy).
That leaves me with the 5K run to do this week, and that is Keswick Parkrun on Saturday.
I'm hoping I can follow JuJu's plan, but I will probably be doing the long run midweek, starting with the short run with some intervals on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how I recover from Sunday.
Happy running!