New Poll Q - Do you wear a HR monitor while racing?

Was surprised to read a blog entry recently where the author mentioned that the hr monitor provided some confidence to push beyond their comfort level and set a new PR. It never occurred to me to wear a hr monitor during a race - just seems too restrictive for racing. I like it for training, but I don't know about racing. And I can't recall ever seeing one during a race, but I also don't recall ever looking for one either. So now I'm curious - just how common is it to wear a hr monitor during a race? Comment/vote in the poll, and let me know what you think.

New unofficial 10k PR

Went running with the Lake Grapevine Runners and Walkers this morning for my long run. The weather was amazing - in the upper 60's at the start. It felt great compared to the 90's I've been running in over the past several weeks. They have  a nice course that runs along Lake Grapevine. It's a 4-mile out and back full of small rolling hills. They had several water/gatorade stops set up along the way. I stopped a few times during my run for a drink, which is something I don't usually do.

Despite my stops, I somehow managed to finish the first 10k of the run in 1:03:53, crushing my official 10k PR (set July 4) by over 11 minutes!

I finished the 9 mile run in 1:35.

Training Update

Just checking in with a quick update on the past few days. Saturday morning I continued my recent streak of setting distance PR's with my long runs by completing my first ever 9 mile run. Overall, the run went great. Somewhere around mile 8.4-8.5 I started feeling some soreness in my patellar tendons. It wasn't severe, maybe a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10. I've felt that before, back when I was training for my first 10k during my first few 6 mile runs. Eventually it went away. I believe it's just tired muscles that aren't used to the new distances. The pain went away within a few minutes of completing my run. So, at this point I don't think it's anything to be too concerned about.

Sunday evening was my regular day-after-a-long-run recovery run, nothing really notable about it. It's the run that I didn't do last week because of our trip to a water park. Looking back now and comparing the two experiences, I do believe that the day at the water park was far more exhausting.

Monday was rest day, and tonight was 400m intervals. I did 4 intervals, but should have done 5. I didn't check my schedule before I left, so I didn't realize that this was the week that I go up from 4 to 5. As usual, I started with about a 1 mile warmup run, then did the 400m intervals (splits: 96s, 101s, 103s, 102s - good for me!), with 2 minutes of walking between each one, then finished with about a 1 mile cooldown run. I was actually able to run these on a track tonight. This is the only type of workout that I like to do on a track, and when I do intervals, I really prefer the track. The track I use has a great running surface, and it's nice to see where the 400m will end instead of having to check my Garmin (which is difficult when I'm running at my intervals pace). As an added bonus, a cold front blew in today, so the weather was a comfortable 76 degrees. Very nice compared to the upper 90's and 100 degree weather we've been having.