Easy does it...

I've been reading quite a lot about the benefits of slower running recently, with Matchstick Man's thread on RW extolling the virtues of slow runs.  The theory is they give you base miles whilst allowing you to run your other sessions hard.  As I did a good MP session yesterday and have an intention to do a long one tomorrow I decided to give it a go.

As luck would have it the perpetually injured Herb and back-from-urban-dude-snowboarding-holiday Newmanator were both out, so their pace would be about ideal.  We ran up to the canal towpath, which had thawed a little from yesterday so was crunchy and only a little slippery, instead of the deathtrap it was yesterday.  After a few hundred yards on there we decided it was ok to run on, especially as the Herb and I both had trail shoes on.

We ran our normal 5 miler out and back, and ended up with a very steady average pace of 8:40.  It felt very, very easy, and I just chatted to l'Herb all the way, hardly feeling out of breath - so I was astounded to see my average HR was 168 (almost 90% of max!).  My RW chums assured me it was a Garmin chest strap issue, but as you can see if it's right I was working bloody hard:

All that red bit is >90% max HR - and there's no way I was working anywhere near that hard!

Thaw arrives at the weekend, so have a bike ride planned for Sunday, but there's the small matter of a 20 miler to get in first.  I think I'm going to run from Ilkley again, and probably run to the A59 then along the Askwith road, but I'll see how I feel when I get there.  Hopefully the slightly warmer weather will mean the Brass Monkey will be ok for the following week too.  Fingers crossed...