I did a 10K yesterday morning and it was 23 degrees out. I had to walk a little to get to the packet pick-up and then hang out until I started warming up -- maybe twenty minutes out in the cold before warm up. And wow, those first couple of hundred yards of running felt terrible. It felt like all of the cushioning was gone from my Hoka Machs and/or my leg muscles had died. Eventually, it got better (or I just got used to it) and I finished warming up.
I got lined up for the race and waited for National Anthem, etc. before the start. We start and my warm-up did some good. My run doesn't feel too bad. But looking at my heart rate data after the race, my HR ramped up gradually over the first 0.5 miles to a rate that was unsustainable, held at that level for the next 0.5 miles and then quickly ramped down 10 BPM to a more sustainable rate -- all the while my pace is holding steady and I am running on relatively flat ground. There is nothing about the HR graph that makes it look like this higher rate was an HRM error artifact. So did my legs or out/mid-soles finally warm up? Did my body warm up enough to open more blood vessels so my heart didn't have to work so hard? What was happening?
I got lined up for the race and waited for National Anthem, etc. before the start. We start and my warm-up did some good. My run doesn't feel too bad. But looking at my heart rate data after the race, my HR ramped up gradually over the first 0.5 miles to a rate that was unsustainable, held at that level for the next 0.5 miles and then quickly ramped down 10 BPM to a more sustainable rate -- all the while my pace is holding steady and I am running on relatively flat ground. There is nothing about the HR graph that makes it look like this higher rate was an HRM error artifact. So did my legs or out/mid-soles finally warm up? Did my body warm up enough to open more blood vessels so my heart didn't have to work so hard? What was happening?