Back in the Saddle

I went down to Town Lake and ran 4 miles this morning which is the first time I have run since the Half Marathon. Before I left, I performed Polar's OwnOptimizer fitness test which is "a modification of a traditional orthostatic overtraining test," according to the s625X manual (whatever that means). I really don't think I need to worry about "overtraining," but was interested in what the results would show. My baseline is a 2 and the results were a 3--"Your test heart rates are higher than average. You may have exercised intensively in the previous days....other sources of stress, the beginning of a fever or an attack of the flu can result in the same kind of response." Well I haven't run since last Sunday (6 days ago), so maybe it's the lack of exercise and all of the Mexican food that I have treated myself to this week that have caused the increased heart rate. Could I still be recovering from a run 6 days ago?

It felt good to run, I ran 4 miles in 43 minutes which is actually pretty fast for me. And, as I mentioned in my inaugural post, I think my watch is off by 5%. So really, I calculated that I ran 4.2 miles at just under a 10.5 minute/mile.

I know that I am slow, but I am also at least 40 lbs overweight. Although, I have lost about 10 lbs from 4 months ago, I still have a ways to go. Initially, I was disappointed at the lack of weight loss. I was running almost 20 miles a week, and thought the weight should come off faster than that even though it took a good 10 years to put it on. But, I didn't want to sabotage myself. My goal was to complete a half-marathon. It was not (necessarily) to lose weight; however, I knew that weight loss would be a by-product of all the running. Now I know that my body composition is changing from fat to muscle and that I am eating more carbohydrates to sustain the mileage, so my weight loss should be slow and steady...kind of like how I run.