Last week was a rough week. It was supposed to be my first week of distance running (as opposed to time running) and while it started out great on Tuesday with a 3 mile treadmill run I was barely able to do half of my 4 mile run the next day and didn’t do the Friday 3 mile at all. By Thursday morning I had a sore throat and rhinosinusitis (runny nose… really… check wikipedia). I visited my Dr. who said I was too stressed, which made sense since I work for a company that does a lot of mortgage business and… well… that business is bad right now. The other thing he did was give me some arginine pills because I am still having trouble with shin splints. Even though I am trying to eat more peanuts it’s still not enough.

Ok first back to the treadmill run on Tuesday. It had been my best run yet. I had watched my pace carefully and started slow. I was able to do almost 2 miles before I had any problems with my legs. Then I had to alternate 5 minute walking/stretching with the running. Not bad all in all. I had been fairly happy since it was progress. Then I ran on Sunday after having taken two days of arginine pills. No problems. At all. I ran for 1:11:42 and had NO problems. Frankly it was totally amazing. The main thing he said was that he had done some more research and figured out that the α-amino acid Arginine. does better when it enters the digestive system on its own. I guess the other amino acids beat it up. So the pills allow me to take arginine between meals. Very cool.

So that appears to be fixed, which means I need a new goal (problem) to work on. Thankfully I already have it. My heartrate. Take a look at this chart which is from my run on Sunday. My speed stays fairly constant for the full hour plus, but my heart rate continually increases. The last 16 minutes I was in zone 4. My watch complained since I had it set to alert me if I was working too hard. 16 minutes of anaerobic exercise after running an hour was rough.