Week 3 / 20

Last week was a very light week because of the taper before the Half Marathon. Which is just as well, because I had to go to London for work and it is always harder to fit training in around the meetings. I've already written about how fantastically well the Half Marathon went, but I thought I would include some graphs showing how much below my theoretically optimum heart rate I ran most of the race. What is particularly striking is that there is no "heart rate drift," that is to say, once I hit about 170bpm, my heart rate rose no higher until the final sprint. I'm guessing that this is partly due to the cold conditions - around 5 degrees - but I am more and more convinced that this is a measure of my efficiency, both cardiovascularly and in running technique. Also, my pace was relatively even - or at least I didn't slow down much in the second half. The first half was run at an average pace of 3:57min/km while the second half was run at 3:58min/km. As far as aches and pains go, I'm feeling fine, just got a bit of a snuffly cold that I haven't been able to completely shake off for a couple of weeks now.