Run · Tuesday, 6 October 2026 · Week 7, Durability Base
A recovery run brushes the cap again late on
25 weeks to MDS
The recovery run called for in week seven, done as planned: five miles, 312 feet of climbing. The average heart rate sat two under the cap, but seventeen per cent of the time out there went over it.
Mile pace tightened from 12:44 to 12:11 across the run, while heart rate held nearly level, 128 to 127. The legs found a quicker gear and the heart rate barely followed.
On its own this is nothing. But it's the second recovery run in a row where a fine average has sat alongside a real slice of time over the cap. I'll watch that gap between average and time above cap over the next few easy days.
- Distance
- 5 mi
- 8.1 km
- Moving time
- 1h 04m
- started 17:28
- Average pace
- 12:38
- per mile
- Heart rate
- 129
- average · max 150
- Climb
- 312 ft
- 95 m
- Conditions
- 19°C
- 69% humidity · wind 7 km/h
Planned recovery run, full distance.
Heart rate against my cap
My easy running has a heart rate ceiling of 131 bpm. It keeps the effort aerobic while my legs, tendons and joints catch up with the mileage. A run counts as over the cap when the average is more than 2 beats over it, or more than a fifth of the time sits above it.
Under the cap. Average 129 bpm, with 17% of the run above 131.
Mile by mile
| Mile | Pace | Avg HR | Climb |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12:44 | 128 | 115 ft |
| 2 | 11:49 | 130 | 20 ft |
| 3 | 13:45 | 131 | 115 ft |
| 4 | 12:47 | 128 | 46 ft |
| 5 | 12:11 | 127 | 7 ft |
Heart rate in orange is above the 131 bpm cap.
Figures from my watch via Intervals.icu, read by the Ultra Event Training app. Heart rate from a watch is a proxy for effort, not a lab measure. The efficiency figures compare speed per heartbeat early and late in a run with a hill correction; they show what changed, not the cause.