TEMPO relationships

Plan for Sat 5/26: Start easily then increase pace to 90% maxHR for 20 minutes then back down. Total run time: 1 hour.
Want to talk about my relationships with Tempo – this is an issue for me now.
What I did that Saturday to finish the week was
PM: 2 miles at 8:23 to warm up and get ready to Tempo work. Then decided to make 2 uphills to get a decent number of hill runs. Device logged 2 more hill miles at 9:35. I’m lucky about hills, they are about 1 km away from my stadium.

OK. Warm up & couple hills is not a real work. It’s all about preparation to this Monster called Tempo work. I had prepared on the Garmin Training Center this advanced workout:
1. Go for 2 mi sub 8:30
2. Go for 20 min keeping HR zone 4 (for me it’s a range between 148 – 167).
For myself I defined it as running sub 7:00 trying to be closer to 162 heart beats (90% from my maxHR).
3. Go for no target pace until I press “lap” button on the Tool.

Ready, Steady? Here’s what I got for my first tempo:
2 mi @ 8:22, avg.HR 136
20 min, 2.89 mi @ 6:55, avg.HR 157 (it did reach 162 and 163 in the end of tempo stage)
23.16 min, 2.64 mi @ 8:48, avg.HR 146.
Total: 1:00:01, 7.53 mi @ 7:58, avg.HR 147.
I did it perfect and finished that week Sun 5/20 – Sat 5/26 with 62.15 miles.
This could be funny but I personally consider any week which is lower than 70 as “good one, but nothing special”. Here’s a tricky point – I noticed that attempt to make higher mileage brings me to failure at one of workouts. Read on.
Add 5 days from the week Sun 5/27 – Thu 5/31 and I see those nice figures

Total mileage for May 2007: 276.26 miles

Best month in my running life. 2 days off. Third time (Mar, Apr, May) in the club 200+ miles per single month and I feel like have to leave the club, at least for the summer 2007.

P.S. Have no clue why my HR is so-o (comparing to other great guys and gals) low. I was born in Jan 75, so 32 years old now. I did run in 90’s (started somewhere in 93-94) but my relationships with running were nothing serious – like 30 – 40 kilometers per month or 20 – 25 miles. Never cared about constancy of training that time, so I could miss couple winter months, no regrets, also had injures. I remember played basketball a lot. That’s all I did. First time when I realized that I made 10km distance was 25 laps on my stadium I made in May 1997. Remember running in the rainy dark eve and felt like real crap in the end. Why I did 25 quarters? I got dumped or had serious personal problems that day and Running – this Lady is my mistress, I was always in love with her. (Don’t tell me Andrew said that. I knew I’m in love with running even that time). Gee, it was 10 years ago!
More about HR. If you read recent Dallen’s post you could see that his HR jumps to 190’s (!). This guy 1 or 2 years younger and surely was a hell runner in the mid90’s.
Well, let’s get back to June 2007 : )