AM - I have been doing a lot of miles but not much quality so I decieded to do a tempo this morning to see how things would go. The plan was a 5 mile tempo at about 6:00 pace which I was hoping would feel like marathon pace effort. I had no idea what to expect as I have not done any workouts at this pace for a long time. If all went well then I would try and do a progressive tempo starting at 6:00 pace and get a little faster each mile if not then at least try and hold 6:00 pace. Warmed up about 4 miles and started on the standard Sasha 5 mile tempo route on the Provo River trail. Started very relaxed and it almost felt too easy. Hit the first mile dead on 6:00 with all quarters right at 1:30. This felt very relaxed and controlled at this point. The next mile I again focused on staying relaxed and easy. I hit the second mile in 5:58 again with very even quarters. So far so good as it felt like a relaxed marathon pace. I hit the 2.5 mile turn around at 14:58, right where I wanted to be and feeling good. At this point I figured I might as well start picking it up and try and hit a negative split for the last 2.5 miles. Mile three was a 5:53 and still felt pretty relaxed. With 2 miles left I figured I might as well put in more of a threshold effort and see what happens. The fourth mile was a 5:40 and this started to feel more like threshold pace. For mile five I wanted to just stay focused but as relaxed as possible at threshold pace. I finished the last mile in 5:30 and the total for 5 miles was 29:01 giving me a 14:03 for the second 2.5 miles and a 55 second negative split. Splits were (6:00/5:58/5:53/5:40/5:30) finished off with a 4 more miles. Overall I was very pleased with the run considering I am in the middle of a 120 mile week following 115 miles last week. I am not sure what to think of it as far as what it indicates for St. George. I think I am in better shape than Ogden but I'm not sure what that equates to for St. George. Although I am pretty sure a sub 2:40 is well within reach. I guess I will know in just under 4 weeks. Looking at Garmin afterwards I am also pleased to see that my heart rate was very resonable. Even at 5:30 pace it averaged about 170 which equates to about an 86% max heart rate for me. Plan to run more this evening. PM - Added 7.5 more miles this evening. Ran with James for a little and then did a Sasha training event by running while watching Jared's soccer game. It gets very boring looping around the soccer field but I was able to get 6 miles in during the game all on the grass. Averaged 7:30 pace for the whole run. Below is a link to an interesting read on running economy. Running Economy | 