3800

My exercise routine keeps plugging along.  I had to go back and figure it out, but today is the 3,800th day in a row where I walked (or now mostly running) 5 miles each and every day.  3,800 days in a row without missing a single day!

This past Saturday, I was running on a treadmill (not what I typically enjoy, but probably three or four times a month in the winter I do this out of safety because it is too damn icy outside and an indoor track is not available).  I decided to try to push myself, and I ran 5K (a common road race distance of 3.1 miles) in 23:40.  This is a personal record for me.  Granted, it was on a treadmill which is different than an actual road race, but it made me happy.  I think I will every once in a while, when I need to run on a treadmill, try to see if I can improve on this "PR".  I am going to call it my current Treadmill PR.  My best run on an actual, official road race thus far has been 24:44.  But, I have only ran three actual races (all this past Summer) that were officially timed.  It is still hard and somewhat embarrassing for me to run in a real race, with other people, because I still have a lot of feelings that I am being foolish and I still have the damn emotional baggage of being a nonathletic "fat kid" who would get badgered by the real athletes while in school. 

Running at the rate I did to get the 23:40 meant I was running a just slightly under 8mph during the entirety of the run (this is just slightly under 13kph for metric fans). 

At the end of the run, I had a good aerobic target zone heart rate of 150 bpm. This puts me at about the 90% zone, which meant I was very aerobic. 

Five minutes after the run, my heart rate was down to 66bpm.

Ten minutes after the run, my heart was down to 59bpm. 

Not too damn bad for an old duffer who used to weigh nearly 300 pounds (~136kg or 21.5 stone).  I weighed 172 pounds today (~78kg or 12.3 stone)!

PipeTobacco