Gave it a go for my 1st MAF run. I enjoyed it. As my wife had to go in to work this morning, I decided to get up early and run. Sidenote to that, whenever we sleep with a window open, the birds start going sometime between 4-5am and that ALWAYS wakes me up. Since I was planning on getting out before 6am, I figured I'd leave the window open and wake up that way. It actually worked well and I wasn't jolted by an alarm. Just got out of bed by 5:15a and headed out the door. I didn't have much time since she needed to leave but I was able to get a half hour in. I mention that only because I've never enjoyed running in the morning. But, with the incoming heat, I may start to. And this didn't feel that bad.
My thoughts:
1) Going slow wasn't as painful as I thought it might be. In fact, I had enough opportunity to vary my pace as I'll get to in a moment that this was a non-issue for me. I was also surprised to see my 1st minute pace as it didn't "feel" that slow due to #2. It was neat seeing it that slow without it killing me.
2) A lot of watch watching. The good thing is, I already have a really good feel for what my HR is while I'm running without even seeing it. The moment I felt I might be pushing over 140, I'd look down and settle in. I did set an alarm on the watch to beep for anything <130 or >140. For my first run, I think I did quite well with that. Only a few times did it creep over 140 and except for two times (143 and 144 at the very end), it never got over 142 and I got it back down to 140 quickly.
3) Because of all the focus on the watch and HR, my mind was actually pretty relaxed and it made for an enjoyable run even at the slow pace. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but especially now since I run without music, my mind is nuts when I run. What do I think about while I'm out there usually? Running. But not necessarily in a good way. I think about what you guys do. And how cool it would be if I could do some of that. Or I'll think about how much a race sucked. Or how could I possibly run x

x pace when this pace right now feels like it does. Just constant thoughts about comparisons to previous runs and races and others and stuff I should just not worry about.
With all the focus on the HR this morning, I had none of that for the first time that I can remember. So it made for a very peaceful run.
3) I only had to walk twice. Both times on hills, walked for about 10 seconds to stop my HR climb. It is amazing the variation I have on hills. On anything with any sort of grade, I have to slow down to ~13:00 min/mile or it wants to shoot past 140. On the flip side, when I would hit a downhill, my HR would start to drop into the low 130's almost immediately. I used those to actually run faster and was in the mid 9's trying to get it back up to 140. That's what I meant above in that I can vary my pace to not keep it so slow due to the hills.
4) I ran a relatively "flat" run for where I live. It would be nice to do this on flatter terrain but that would involve me driving. So I may end up having to keep doing the same thing over and over here. But, I like this new "challenge" of maintaining my HR in a specific zone.
Is one hour/day of this kind of running enough (assume 6-7 times/week)? Is there still benefit if I'm only out for half hour?