I think there is more to this than just me being motivated to do it after a couple of weeks visiting my parents at a kilometer and a half elevation, although I am sure that this is at least part of the reason why I did so well on my first run back in Chicago.
For one thing, the temperature it starting to turn cooler here in the Windy City and we are about about to enter the best time of year IMO for running on the lake shore.
don't let the IG's of people having tons of space fool you. Unless you go out there in the middle of the day on a work-day, there are going to be what appears to be half the city's population all out there at the same time.
I was able to get out there mid-day and it was overcast but didn't rain, so this worked out wonderfully. It was also a work day that doesn't apply to me because while I do have a 5-day work-week, my "weekend" is not Saturday and Sunday.
My only real objective here was to slow down as little as possible and I only stopped once to take my shirt off because I was sweating so much I was fearing chest rash burn if I didn't. My speed was nothing spectacular but I wasn't aiming for that. I didn't even look at my watch other than to switch it on and off.
I wasn't forcing a particular pace either but it looks like my body just naturally gravitates towards 7 mins per kilometer and I am ok with that. It pains me to try to go faster and my watch just doesn't have the size of font that I can really reliably look at while running.
I was just pleased that after nearly 7km I wasn't really winded, it was just time to go home because once again, I was out of water.
I'm still quite disappointed by how high my heart rate is but I am starting to think that my watch may actually not be accurate about this. One would think that if my heart rate was really that close to my max all the time that I would suffer some sort of ill effect but honestly, even when I do slow to a walk towards the end I don't really feel like my breathing or my heart rate are out of control. I think it is a bad reading.
It's about time for me to get a different watch anyway so I reckon we are going to find out soon. I think I am going to stray away from the watches with a ton of touch-screen features and instead look for basic watches with huge battery life.
I'll be searching on Decathlon in the next few days for exactly that.
I look forward to the runs being a lot easier in October and November but then the become crazy difficult for another reason start December. Our winters are pretty damn brutal here, but I run all the way through them.
