Running To The Crawl: Tick Tock, Tick Tock

VA governor Northam is doing his best to keep me from running an official half marathon this year. Apparently he wants to keep the state shut for a year or so. We'll see how long that, and his governorship, lasts if he does that. Anyway

So One of the things for this summer was to up my cadence by running with a metronome. Today was the first 5 miler with it. Started out at 86 BPM and got it up to 89 by the second mile. Average speed dropped by 13 seconds. This is with a 10 step per minute increase. Once I got into it I realized I can probably do a faster cadence but this was a good start. The no music thing is going to be a problem on long runs.

So clear proof, if you need it, that increased cadence will speed up your pace at the same effort (I was doing a MAF run as well). If this keeps up I may be looking at dropping another 20 or so seconds off my half....whenever I get to run one.

Running To The Crawl

I thought Road to The Crawl was dumb so it's Running to The Crawl. So since the Sham was cancelled and I have all this fitness with nothing to do, I decided that I would train for the Crawling Crab held in October. I thought the race was in Norfolk, VA but apparently it's in Hampton, VA. Makes the hotel plans a but more complicated since the Sham doubles as a kind of beachfront holiday.

Currently the Vomeros are showing wear, particularly on my left, problem, foot. For such expensive sneakers to be showing more wear at half the mileage of my cheaper sneakers is not confidence inspiring. The Pegs await fast days and race days so I'm not worried about that pair. But I'll clearly have to invest in another 2 pairs of sneakers prior to October.

On the training front I'm "flattening the MAF" as in I'm dropping my average slow pace heart rate for the slower runs. Instead of trying to push to MAF and stay there, I'm allowing myself to run at a lower rate, not necessarily slower pace. I'm currently testing out a Mi Band 4 which does not have an always on screen. So I have no idea how fast I'm running except for when I get to a mile marker. I recently ran a 12 mile PR under these conditions, which previously required me to run *very* fast for the last two miles. So not knowing how fast I'm running during a run, but only knowing my heart rate, is proving very beneficial.

Lastly, I'm working on my cadence. My band, and watch, has been saying that my cadence is 167 which is very low. Since both of these things do not accurately measure my heart rate I'm concerned that it may be low. So I'm going to do a test to count my cadence. Experts say that I should be at 180. Taller people, like myself, tend to have lower cadences so if I get into the mid 170s I'd be happy. Unfortunately the metronome app I have conflicts with the music app sooo running in silence would be required. I don't like running in silence.

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