Has Fall Fell?

This morning was pretty spectacular. Temps were around 63 degrees, and even with the humidity, it was wonderful weather for a nice and easy 7 miler. Brian, Emily, Alex, Frank and I hit the trail at 5:50am for a relaxed recovery effort on the I-35 loop. We took it pretty easy, and ended up with about 7 miles at something around 9:45/mile pace. That includes a water break at Mopac. Actual running pace was 9:30-ish. I set a new record for low average HR for a recovery run, which was great to see. This is how these sorts of runs should be. When it's been so warm out, the HR is artificially elevated due to the increased workload imposed on the body trying to throw off all that heat. With the almost spring-like weather, our bodies were much more efficient machines.

Interesting to me was the discussion about our HR ranges. Frank runs low, while Alex and I have higher peak HR numbers. Emily has a really low morning HR. Brian is somewhere in between all those. That doesn't mean a higher peak HR number is good or better, it just goes to show that you really need to know what your HR range is before you can make any useful sense out of HR data.

Afterwards, we knocked out some striders and then I got some stretching in, talking to Pete.

It was a relaxing and fun workout today. Saturday is the first official day of Austin Marathon training, so that'll be interesting to meet some new people. By the way, at this point, even after all my grumpiness about the new AT&T Austin course, I'm planning on running here in 2007. Hopefully, I can PR even with the new tougher course. To dip my marathon time down significantly, though, I'll have to run a different race in late 2007 or in 2008. I'll use the 2007 Austin race as a modest PR run. It will require some smart race planning, but surely I can do that? I dread having to train for a fall marathon in 2007, but it looks like I'll have to do that in order to get on a faster course.