I made six trips up Packard Ave. today, plus the Broadway “warm-up hill”. I ran most of them a little slower than last week. My peak heart rate was a little lower, too. Apparently I wasn’t working quite as hard today, though I prefer to say I was “pacing myself more carefully”.
I did get a little faster as I went along. My last hill was the fastest, probably because I had someone to chase. A woman runner turned off the cross-street and headed uphill as I was nearing the bottom of my downhill recovery trot. She had a head start of about 25 yards when I began to climb. I almost caught her before the summit, but once we reached the top she pulled away because I stopped for a few seconds to make sure my stomach stayed down in my torso where it belonged.
After my run, I wandered into a bike shop to see if I could find a set of pedals with toe clips that wouldn’t dig into my feet through the soft soles of my running shoes. They don’t seem to exist, but I did find a pair of wide Sidi bike shoes in my size in the clearance bin. They were only $149, a savings of $110, which was much too good of a deal to pass up.
Of course, I’d save much more, maybe $500, if I skipped the whole shoe/cleat thing. I carefully ignored that fact.
I was introduced to Ed Sassler, the guy in the shop who fits the more challenging customers. I spent the next two hours working with Ed trying to fit a set of cleats properly. We made quite a bit of progress (I think) before we gave up temporarily due to a lack of the proper size pedal extender.
Ed is also a bike coach at Harvard. He was kind enough let me know, as gently as possible, that my pedaling form is horrible.
(6.3 mi. run; 147#)