Heading Into Another Recovery Week

The third week of March is now at an end and my training continues to stay on track. This morning I ran 18km at an average heart rate of 139bpm and pace of 5:41/km. All in all it was the perfect long run. Even though my route included two significant hills in the form of Beechwood Avenue, which leads up and out of the Don Valley over a steady 500m climb (the entire length is half-a-kilometre, not the elevation gain because if that were the case I'd be dead right now, but it is pretty steep and steady, guessing somewhere in the 4-5% incline range), my overall goal to keep the average heart rate under 140bpm was met. I decided to run the same loop twice because I can tell that this will make for a good place to run those really long marathon training runs later this summer. It has two water fountains fairly well separated, puts me never that far from home, and includes that aforementioned hill for extra training benefits.

The whole week's worth of running added up to 46km (the highest total of the year) and I am now only 29km away from my monthly total goal of 155km. This coming week is another recovery week when I will only run three times and will likely top out somewhere in the 25-30km range. Then there are a few days at the beginning of the following week to finish off March and get April off to a good start.

In summary: so far so good...