AM - Well today the plan was to do another 5 mile tempo run on the standard Provo River 2.5 mile course. For those that like the bottom line up front I ended up running 28:07 (5:37 avg.) for the 5 mile tempo which is a big step forward for me. The rest of the story follows. I wanted to try and run about 5:50 pace at first and then drop to 5:45 or so depending on how things felt. This was based on last week being able to average 5:48 after starting the first 2.5 right on 6:00 pace. I figured if all went well I could average about 5:45 or so this time. Sasha and Jeff were with me today and volunteered to help take turns leading quarters. I was a bit concerned that they would push it too fast on their turns as this would be a fairly easy pace for them. After warming up about 4 miles we started into the 5 miler. I led the first 1/4 and hit 1:27 so pretty much right where I wanted to be and it felt very relaxed and easy at this point. We went through the first mile in 5:47, a bit ahead of plan but it felt very relaxed. Sasha and Jeff were doing a good job of hitting fairly even quarters at this point when we traded off. Things picked up a little the second mile as we went through it at 5:41. Again it felt a little faster but still relaxed. This started to feel like threshold. Sasha picked it up a bit on his next uphill quarter and I could feel the difference. Jeff then put us back on a more reasonable pace again. We hit the 2.5 mile turn around in 14:20 and I was thinking if I could maintain this then 28:40 for 5 miles would be a good time today. I was still feeling pretty decent so I knew it was possible. We hit the third mile in 5:41 again and I could feel it a little bit but still feeling like threshold. At this point Sasha and Jeff started to push the pace a bit more on their quarters and I could feel the difference but was willing to push and see what I could do. We did a 5:28 for mile 4 and this was a bit tougher and started to feel like I was definetely dipping under threshold. This was feeling more like 10K effort now. I asked Jeff and Sasha to not push too hard the last mile or they would drop me. They complied and maintained a pretty even pace. We did mile 5 in 5:30 with the last two quarters in 1:23 and 1:20. Overall 5 mile tempo was 28:07 today which is 54 seconds faster than last week. This was a big surprise as I did not really expect this. Finished off with 4 more miles cool-down and for 13 miles averaged 6:59 pace. So splits ended up being 5:47, 5:41, 5:41, 5:28, 5:30. Sasha is telling me I need to shoot for a sub 2:30 at St. George based off of this workout but I am still not convinced I am ready for that yet. I need to figure out what pace to run but I am still leaning on going out no faster than 1:17 but Sasha says I need to go out in 1:16 for the first half. Well, a couple more weeks to make that decision I guess. A few more miles planned tonight. PM - Ran 5.6 more easy miles tonight at James XC race helping set up course and running with James during warm-up and cool-down. More than I planned but that just means tomorrow will be easier.
| 