I'm a Believer... yeah yeah yeah

I was anxious to get breakfast going this morning, but I practised using my patience muscle while The Captain prepared our Saturday morning pancakes.  It doesn't get used a whole lot and really needs to be worked more often!

Then I played with the settings on my heart rate monitor while I waited a full hour and a half for my breakfast to settle... I find the alarms very annoying and made sure to turn them off ... then I familiarized myself with the numbers that would indicate 70% and 75% of my maximum heart rate.  The wait was agonizing.  At last it was time to get my shoes on and GO! 

S-L-O-W-L-Y

And I did.  I had to keep reminding The Captain that the point of today's run was to go so slowly that I would not feel the need to do any walk breaks.  He  had lots of walk breaks along the way, but it was all very enjoyable.  We chatted the whole way out and back... all the time I kept an eye on the readout on my wrist band and was amazed that I was not wanting to walk. 

I normally have a walk break after every 9 minutes of running, so at 13 minutes I was pleased to not want to walk - then again at 30 minutes - 45 minutes - an hour - and still no desire to walk... or to run faster, either.  I would estimate that most of the time I was running at 72 - 75% of maximum heart rate.  There were a few times it was more than that - as high as 80%, and a few times it was lower - as low as 69%, but overall, it was pretty easy to keep moving at the pace that Sara had suggested to me, for a long slow run.  There was some shuffling involved, but for the most part, I made an effort not to do that.

When we were done, and walking a bit to cool down, I was amazed that I felt like I could have kept going and going and going.  Thank you, Vanessa.  I would never, on my own, have thought to attempt this run without walk breaks.  Now I know I can do it... may not all the time, on every long slow run, but definitely will do it again.

W2 R72 W3
stretch 7 minutes
15 pushups
1 minute high plank with twists
45 second forearm plank
15 second side planks
40 bicycles

I did my stretch, pushups and ab work on the wooden dock beside the boat and was happy no one saw me!

While The Captain was showering, I made myself a huge green smoothie... spinach, strawberries, vanilla soy millk.

That filled me up over my shower, and well past our normal lunch time... but by the time I was hungry again, I was ravenous!  I had a huge plateful of Romaine, grape tomatoes, green onions, button mushrooms, red peppers, and cottage cheese, topped with EVOO, white balsamic vinegar, bacon bits, sunflower seeds, and oregano.  It went down pretty quickly.

Now, to think about those fiddleheads....