Run · Thursday, 8 October 2026 · Week 7, Durability Base
Pace creeps up late and the cap takes another hit
25 weeks to MDS
The plan called for a longer easy run this week, and I got close: five miles in just over an hour, a touch short of what was asked. The average heart rate landed two under the cap, which looks fine at first glance.
But a fifth of the run sat above it, same pattern as the recovery run a few weeks back. Pace went from 12:43 for the first mile to 12:26 for the last, heart rate barely moving, 126 up to 128. So the extra speed late on is what pushed the average close and tipped some of the run over.
Nothing in this one run tells me why. I'll keep watching whether this late creep over the cap keeps showing up on easy days, or whether it was just this run.
- Distance
- 5 mi
- 8.1 km
- Moving time
- 1h 04m
- started 16:40
- Average pace
- 12:48
- per mile
- Heart rate
- 129
- average · max 165
- Climb
- 318 ft
- 97 m
- Conditions
- 13°C
- 60% humidity · wind 13 km/h
Planned easy run (longer), distance changed on the day.
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.
Over the cap. Average 129 bpm, with 21% of the run above 131. The fix is to slow down, walk the steeper bits if I need to, and let it settle.
Mile by mile
| Mile | Pace | Avg HR | Climb |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12:43 | 126 | 115 ft |
| 2 | 12:32 | 128 | 23 ft |
| 3 | 13:44 | 133 | 115 ft |
| 4 | 12:51 | 130 | 52 ft |
| 5 | 12:26 | 128 | 13 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.