Met up with Sasha this morning, we headed out for a 5-mile tempo. The goal was 5:30 pace, Sasha was set to pace us through the run. I ended up at 27:22 (5:28.4 pace), and this was a great run for me. Also a PR over 5 miles.
We went through the first mile in 5:25 feeling good, and I made Sasha back off the pace a touch for the second mile. I kinda spaced out here, though, and didn't notice two miles when it came and went (Sasha says we passed in 10:55). In fact, when we reached the turnaround, I was still thinking we were in mile 2, so it was a nice mental boost to see we were half way done. Mile three passed in 16:27, and compared to last week's tempo, I was feeling pretty good. I started to get the funny heartbeats during this mile - it makes me a little nervous since a few people have suggested PVCs don't happen at high heart rates. I've only averaged about 5 hours/night of sleep, so I'm sure that is contributing. Anyway, with about 1.5 left I was starting to feel more tired, but I was still surprised at how good I felt. We passed mile 4 in 21:57 (another PR!), and I wanted to push the last mile as much as possible. I find that at the end of races I'm too conservative about pushing the pace, so these tempo runs are a good chance to focus on a fast last mile. Even so, the last mile wasn't that fast, at least not as fast as what I felt it should be. I tried to go by Sasha a few times(who was puking all day yesterday, by the way) but he wouldn't let me and kept a decent gap. I didn't open the throttle too much until the last 200m (see what I mean? I need to push sooner.), and by then Sasha had about three seconds on me. I closed the gap, but didn't quite catch him. So huge confidence booster here. These were the splits: 5:25, 5:30, 5:32, 5:30, 5:25.
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