Le sel de la vie

Yesterday, I took part in Tsukuba marathon festival after 7 months. During hot season, I entered 3 trail running races in order to train my body in the mountain, which some running guidance books recommend.
I noticed instantly that the way of practice for trail running is different from that for full marathon.
Firstly, marathon race is held on almost flat road, but trail race is on rough, up and down road. It means that you can manage your plan at the marathon race easier than trail race.
So I arranged my practice for each two kind of race.
Anyway, I trained for 7 months and realized my physical power was improved rather than before.
So I thought I could beat my own record beyond all doubt. But I faced the unexpected result which was worst record in this year.
It is said that heart rate at a certain speed would be reduced by training.
While running, heart rate which is verified by my GPS watch usually act as a barometer for intensity of training, so I recognize the relationship between heart rate number and pace in advance.
Heart beat number in this race is relatively high rather than usual. So I modified pith and stride while running, but every idea did not work on reducing my heart beat number.
My running pace were falling remarkable after 30 km, I could not recover it until goal line.
But it is good for me, because my physical condition might be bad, if I did not watch heart beat number, I could not aware that.
So monitoring of Heart beat number is important to know my condition objectively.
Following figure shows the comparison between good (Kasumigaura) and bad (Tsukuba) condition.