A learning kind of day

Today has been a good day.

Training this morning was a very solid brick session and it went well. After that everything has been sunshine and lolly pops.

Actually it is more than the glow that comes with a session that has gone well. It is also the warm fuzzy you get when you know you have learned something.

This morning's session was a short(ish) ride followed by an 18km run. Now, I have been racing long enough to know that this is the sort of session I need before a race. I am a creature of confidence. For me to race well I need to know that I can. I am not a good one for blind hope, I prefer confident knowledge. A big part of that confidence comes from sessions like this one. Get out and practice the race.

However, whist I knew this session was important, saying I was a little apprehensive about it would be putting it medley. Running was a bit of a mixed bag this week, so I just wasn't certain how the 18km would go. In the end I decided that I was getting focused on the wrong aspects of the run and getting myself caught up in it. I decided that I needed to change my focus.

Last week I was chatting to Daryl about how to pace the race up in Philippines. Pacing a race like that is always hard because the conditions are so different to what I usually train in. Daryl's suggestion was that I race by heart rate. Given his familiarity with my training, he was able to suggest some target zones.What he said made sense, however, I haven't really raced with heart rate before, so I wasn't entirely sure about it. I realised that if I was going to go with heart rate pacing, then I should probably do some practice.

So going into this run that is what I decided to focus on. Not pace, but heart rate.

It went startlingly well.

Sometimes you get a wake up call that you should be putting a little bit more faith in the advice you are getting from people who know what they are talking about.

Heading into the run and keeping an eye almost exclusively on heart rate I was amazed to see that in the end my pace was close to exactly right. Out by 0.3 of a second/km. It felt good in the process too.

The session gave me some faith that my run is actually going quite well (for me). Today was one of the better runs I have had over that distance. It also gave me a bit of confidence in using my heart rate as a metric for the race. All good things.

Tomorrow is a public holiday in Perth so I have a very relaxing evening in front of me followed by a relaxing morning tomorrow. The only thing on the cards tomorrow is a bit of a spin. I might also pack the bike in preparation for flying out Wednesday.

Let the taper begin.