WIND!

From weather.com:

The National Weather Service in Louisville, KY has issued a HIGH WIND WARNING FOR JEFFERSON CO., KY

* SUSTAINED WINDS OF 30 TO 40 MPH ARE EXPECTED... AS WELL AS WIND GUSTS TO AROUND 55 MPH AT TIMES... ESPECIALLY IN ANY HIGHER TERRAIN AREAS.

To emphasize the strong winds that I ran in this morning, I will type the rest of this blog entry in italic. The wind in actually blowing the letters off the page!

Today was the first run of my Base Phase. The goal is to stay in heart rate zone 2 (154-162) for the entire run, regardless of what pace I am running. I knew that it was going to be windy, but it was brutal...especially when I went west, running right into a head wind of 30-40 mph!!

I ran a total of 7.20 miles in 1:00:04, which is a pace of 8:21 min/mile. This is much slower than I want to run, but as I mentioned before, I have to expect this while I'm building my aerobic endurance. I'll blame a little bit on the wind, but I can't complain too much, it was 54F this morning...and it's December 9th!!!

Here's my run profile of this morning's route from RunKeeper:



A few variations in speed when going up and down hills. It's also obvious that my average speed decreased as I ran...this was necessary to stay in zone 2. I was constantly checking my HR monitor and was in the 158-160 range for the whole run.