Mono Nordic, located in Orangeville puts on good trail running race every fall around this time. The course is rolling terrain, mostly grassy and dirt covered by leaves. This is the second year in a row I’ve done the event. This year I thought it would be a good gauge of my current fitness. I figured this year should be better than last as I’ve trained longer, more hours and have run more than last spring/summer. If you consider only the time out on course, this year didn’t go as well. I ended up completing the race 20 seconds slower than last year. My first thought was – well that’s great… Not really… This year the weather was better and the trails were not as slippery, not to forget the aforementioned differences in training. Why did I run slower? Read on…

This is where a heart rate monitor and a bit of “feel” is nice. How did I feel? Well, I wasn’t pushing as hard this year, I thought, I was having trouble finding that extra gear. Is this mental, yes totally, but the brain listens to the body whether you like it or not! Did I bonk, I don’t think so… It’s hard to truly bonk on a 5.5km course! Here is the HR data for the two events:

Notice how they start at the same level.. Up to about 178 bpm. Then, right at the start things to degrade. This year (red line) I was having trouble getting above 180 bpm let alone over the 190 I saw last year (blue line). The average HR for 2005 was 177 (max 186), for the 2004 event it was 185 (max 199!). As you can see the body was working a lot closer to 100% during 2004.

Conclusion:

-         The positive here is that I was able to run basically the same pace in 2005 as in 2004 and not even close to maxing out.

-         The negative here is similar. I wasn’t able to max out in 2005! Why, was a little tired, didn’t sleep so well the night before, yeah the usual… blah blah… Can’t really be sure, some days the ol legs are just a bit flat…

The moral here is twofold. If your gonna do it, go hard right at the start, don’t let your body get complacent! Secondly, well, some days it just isn’t there!!