My Running Journal, 021610

Today was supposed to be a 2 miler. I mapped it out, and the route that I decided to run mapped out to be about .02 over – so off I went. Turns out, according to the GPS, that it was only 1.97 miles. 150ish feet short. Looking at the route as charted by the GPA, it looks like I was zigzagging all over the place – if the track is to be believed, I was veering from one side of the road to the other. I’m pretty sure I was running straight down the middle of the road. Since I am using an Iphone, I think it may be using a combination of the GPS chip to track, along with triangulation from cell towers and WiFi base stations. I’m going to turn off the WiFi tomorrow when I head out, and see if that has an effect. There are also all of these spikes in the data chart for my speed and pace - I’m trying to figure out how to correlate the spikes with where I am on the course – like when my pace drops dramatically, is it because I am slowing down as I approach an intersection, or is it because I have made a turn? I need to figure this out, because there are sections of my runs where I have a nice steady, pretty consistent pace, and then suddenly there is this enormous spike.

This morning I did 1.97 miles in 20 minutes, 27 seconds. My pace averaged 10:15 mins/mile, and I finished faster than I started. First mile was down in 10:34, and the remainder I managed to bump up my pace to 9:54. Still not very fast, but this is still only the 3rd week.

Getting motivated to run this morning took a little bit of effort, but once I was up and out of bed, it was much easier to actually get going. I was hemming and hawing between doing the scheduled workout (2 miles), or switching over to my Vibram Five Fingers and doing some nearly barefoot work. The longer distance won out – I need to focus on improving my baseline cardio, and I can work in barefoot stuff later.

The first half of a mile this morning was tough – my hip was really bugging me. I isn’t the “I’m about to rip a muscle” sharp stabbing pain, but a dull ache that says that the muscle is in spasm, and isn’t cooperating. After the first half mile or so, the hip starts to warm up and ease up a little bit, but I am going to have to really focus on not injuring myself.