I ended last week with an easy weekend. Saturday was a rest day and Sunday contained an easy 40km ride and swim. But I still managed to clock up over 14 hours, thanks largely to the 5 hour ride on Thursday morning. The long ride covered 138km and even though it was done at an easy pace, I still felt quite fatigued during Friday's run and swim which is why I took Saturday off.
When I woke up this morning the knee was OK (not great, just OK), but I was feeling refreshed after an easy weekend and eager to run. I decided to wear a tight tri-top for my run because I've had problems with loose clothing causing static on the heart rate strap resulting in spikes in the reading. Up til now I've tended to run in the heat of the day to help my body acclimatise, but today I decided to run in the cool of the morning. With my run distance now up to 10km I also increased my warmup and cooldown sections from 1km to 2km.
With all the above factors (fresher, no HR spikes, cooler temps, longer warmup) my pace at a heart rate of 137 increased from 5m55s to 5m25s pace. Continually training at your aerobic ceiling (which for me is a heart rate of 137) should over time result in a faster speed for the same heart rate. Frustratingly, up til now my running pace had not improved, even though I had been doing this type of training for over a month. So I was extremely happy to suddenly experience such a sudden leap of improvement.
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