After reading the accounts of @l8arrival and some people around me in real life I decided to swallow the bitter pill and actually force myself to slow down. I decided I want the full experience of the plan instead of jumping in it later, so this will have to work. Today is the hottest day of the year so far and I picked a hilly route and went in my most comfy shoes (which I always wear on my recovery runs) and headed out. Running slow was exhausting. I had to watch the Garmin a lot to make sure I'm not overpacing again. The unusual turtle pace caused my knees to ache a little. It got hotter. I got annoyed. I found myself to looking forward to the two traffic lights on my route because I knew they would add a few seconds on that kilometer, so I could go a bit faster for the rest of it. After having found a groove it was not totally bad anymore. I was just on the trails and enjoying the sun, and I was ticking times just slightly faster than the schedule demands. So far so good. Since the weather was too good and I really didn't feel like stopping, I added a small loop. Oops. Well a little added mile won't make the difference. Being home and uploading the run on strava, I was honestly surprised on the heart rate. While being more than one minute slower than yesterday, my heart rate was pretty much the same, peaking even higher. Ok, I usually don't care too much for that, but when I force myself to slow down that significantly, I would just expect a little lower heart rate. Meh! I always knew it, turtle pace is harder than normal. 😣 Anyway, it was probably the heat and had nothing to do with me or the turtle pace. I'll see how this goes. I'll definitely look closer on how the heart rates on the slow runs change over the course of the next 18 weeks. Having a bit of a headache (another point for the sun) so I'll head to bed and watch some stuff on YouTube...
