Waterworks Route.

One of the advantages of living in Leixlip for a runner is the hills and every run that starts from my house includes at least four climbs so there's no escaping them. One of our regular runs we call the Waterworks loop because it passes a water treatment plant and reservoir and this particular run is quite undulating with terrain that varies from road to forest trail.   It's quite an interesting route with some tough climbs but also includes plenty of opportunity for recovery.
When running this route last night I decided that I'd use this session as a benchmark of my current condition and the plan from now is to run it every monday and monitor my progress.  Total distance was 10 mile and more importantly I ran it within a heart rate zone of 146-153 bpm which equates to 75-80% of my heart rate reserve HRR.  To get your HRR you subtract your resting heart rate from your heart rate max and you then get the percentage (75% and 80%) of that figure and then you add your resting heart rate to get the required zone.  The advantage of using an exact zone makes it easier to monitor progression and in theory I should start to cover the route slightly faster within the same operating heart rate range.
If you look at the above picture you will notice the running index of 66, this is a polar measurement of the run quality and it shows how easily you can run at a given pace.  A higher number or an increase from your current result shows that you require less effort to run at the same pace which of course is improvement.