Tempo run - 10 miles w/ 5 miles @ 15K-1/2M pace. 5:19 am, 30°F, 85% humidity, winds calm. Curse you, Daylight Savings Time! I woke up several times during the night and thought that I just should just get up and run in the middle of the night so that I could go back to bed afterwards. However, I stayed in bed as long as I could. One minute before my alarm was supposed to go off, my daughter came into my room because she had had a bad dream. I let her climb into bed with me and I hit the snooze alarm. The next time my alarm went off, I got up and got dressed, but then I had a delay while I ironed clothes for my husband. So I didn't make it out the door quite as early as I would have liked to. Nevertheless, felt like 4:19 to my body, so it might as well have been the middle of the night. Except I don't get to go back to bed now. We got just a wee bit of snow last night. It's mostly just on the grassy areas, but I did hit a couple of snowy spots when I was running. I hate the 5th mile on the route that I ran today. I struggle with it every time. Incidentally, my goal pace range was either 7:59 to 8:09 or 7:53 to 8:04, depending which of my race results I put into the pace calculator. AP: 8:47. Splits: 9:50, 9:50, 9:46, 8:15, 8:22, 8:06, 7:36 (oops, a little too fast), 7:53, 9:05, 9:06, 0.23 @ 8:48. So I managed to get the third mile, at 8:06, barely into the top end of the slower of my two pace ranges, and the fifth mile, at 7:53, really barely into the bottom end of the faster of my two pace ranges. Mostly I ran either too slow or too fast. Nevertheless, my average pace for the tempo portion works out to about 8:02, and that's in both ranges. In case anyone is still paying attention, this week's proprioceptive cue is "Pounding the Ground," which was the first one I did before I started doing these cues in order. But I decided to do it again this week rather than skipping it. So here is the description from Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald. "Most runners are taught to run as softly as possible. In fact, running speed is almost entirely a function of how forcefully you hit the ground with your feet. The typical runner--especially the typical overstriding runner--allows his or her foot to fall passively to the ground with each stride. Instead, practice actively driving your foot into the ground. Be sure to give a somewhat backward pull to this driving movement rather than a completely vertical movement. Also, if you are currently a heel striker (overstrider), work on shortening your stride and landing flat-footed before using this proprioceptive cue, which teaches you to stiffen your stride, thrust earlier, and minimize ground contact time." I found that I did speed up slightly whenever I thought about and tried to implement this cue. This is my only real speed workout this week. I intend to run at an easy pace the rest of the week (except for short strides on Friday) in preparation for Saturday's half marathon. Other than that, I'm not really tapering for this race. I'm training through it, I guess. Happy Ides of March, everyone.
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