Thursday, January 07, 2010

At Least it was Sunny

I ran 4 miles yesterday since I had the long run the day before and I had a massage at 2. I thought I had a massage, turns out it was for today at 2. I did get to see a friend for supper but I was hurting yesterday; my head is a little stuffy and I was tired.
Today I ran 10.2 miles at an 8:32 pace and with more sleep my heart rate was 22 bpm lower than yesterday at the beginning. I do think the Garmin has to calibrate at first but after seeing the effect correlate over 3 different days I do think the amount of sleep is a factor in the higher initial reading. I'll keep checking.
I just got the book "The Extra Mile" by Pam Reed who won the Badwater Ultramarathon. Sounded interesting and it was relatively inexpensive used from Amazon.
Speaking of books, "Born to Run" was a great book. It's main story is about setting up an ultra race between elite ultramarathoners and the Tarahumara Indians. But it is much more. One of it's underlying themes is that man was born to run. We have at least 27 adaptations for running, a ligament for holding our head up right, Achilles tendons and sweat glands 3 of the major ones.
It discusses a grad student who went to live with native South Africans to learn ultimately how homo sapiens became the dominate species over Neanderthals who had many advantages to survive. Basically, Louis Liebenberg thought that "the art of animal tracking could represent the origin of science itself".
I highly recommend all runners read the book.

1 comment:

Lindsay said...

i got 'born to run' for christmas, and i need to open it up! i have a handful of other running-books that i still need to read too... i've asked for too many in the past years!