Where to Begin?

Thanks Sneakersister re your concerns on my ongoing sketchy truck issue. With my cut-back weeks, I have not been out as early, but have had some observations. One morning I ran out and I thought I saw *the truck*. It was on a slightly different path (further down my street) and turned slowly into a cul de sac. Ran into the house, grabbed my phone, and continued on. Went down the cul de sac and saw 2 papers (out of 5-6 houses). SO, maybe this is a new paperman? Next day, the streets were silent. I ran the same cul de sac and no papers. Hey - maybe this is it? As I turned onto the next street, I see *the truck* turning onto the first residential street in my neighborhood. Hmm. Late this morning. Part of me wanted to check it out to get the make and mode/ license plate. Most of me said, yep we'll skip that street today. Most of me won.

Interestingly, about 20 minutes later, I saw the same truck (or so I think) pulled over in a residential area just sitting there. He had the light on and was looking at some papers (as I've seen before). He appeared to be in his 40s with light complexion/hair. Didn't seem to notice me running by. But he was sitting in a weird spot. What is this dude waiting for? Either a completely incompetent newspaper deliverly guy or up to something. Weird. And it is frankly pissing me off. As much as I love my iPhone, I can't run with it. And who wants to run in fear? Half chastising myself for not running up to his window when he was looking at maps and asking him WTF was he doing in my neighborhood. But of course, reason dominates.

This morning I decided to run outside despite the inch or 2 of snow that was on the ground and more still falling. Just as I opened the door, I saw the truck again trolling down a side cul de sac near my house. I yelled out to John that it was there (unfortunately waking the boys) and ran out determined to get the license plate number. I ran down my him and he looked right at me. It was weird b/c he actually seemed to speed up. I mentally logged the license plate # (although it was hard to read in the dark) and ran back in. I wrote it down, then headed back out. There was a lot of traffic out there unlike most mornings and John had hopped into his truck to check it out. Fortuitously, just as John was coming up along side me, the truck came past me the other way. It was a Ford F-150 and today it had a plow on the front. John circled back and tried to follow him, but he got away. So now I have more information and need to call the cops so they can check into it. I also have a friend who is a cop, so I may ask him to look into it for me now that I have the license #. I'll keep you posted.

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Heart rate. Cindi asked me what I am doing. She has had great success with low heart rate training. I wear an HRM pretty religiously, but monitor it somewhat differently. Here is my strategy:

• I almost always wear it during training runs (rarely races)
• I uses it as a gauge than guidepost
• BUT, if I see HR is overly high during a training run, I may adjust training (i.e. decide to run the quality tomorrow, etc.)
• Resting HR is key
• Rebound HR is key (how long it takes HR to drop down after stopping running or interval).

So what does that mean? I don't do any real HR training, but I use it consistently to check on my fitness generally, or my status for that particular workout. I consistently see that when my fitness increases, my HR drops, both in training runs and in resting HR. When I am tired, overtrained, dehydrated or generally stressed, my resting HR tends to go up.

So there you have it. I find the data pretty useful, although sometimes it is somewhat discouraging.