M'kay

Another good solid workout Dale. The fartlek workout on Tue I thought went down very well. Wed you ran at Easy pace, despite your body giving you indications that it wanted perhaps a slower run that day. Good tempo run, it is very rare with me that they don't feel hard. Running on your own in the middle of a hard training week can't compare with racing.

Thanks, I keep telling myself that the difference is the race gear that suddenly appears at the starting line of a race versus a workout. I'd just love to figure out what the mental trigger is that occurs and use it during workouts.

I also worry a bit that because I train alone I'm sloughing off a bit. Certainly doesn't feel like it but everything I read now says you do better with training partners. Guess my elk don't count.

I think solo running is definitely tougher, advantage is your self-reliant. The ideal for me would be a mix of both solo and group running, in particular it would help on track workouts to have someone to compete with.

Now that summertime is nearly here we have a group meet once a week starting next Fri evening in the area. It depends on who turns up but last year I had some good workouts out of this, sometimes is was almost too competitive.

The other thing I want to do is race more 10k's this year, rather than have a speed workout on my own, I figure it will be more enjoyable and effective to go and run in a small local race.

Finally I'm sure elks can count.

We just got your weather, man, evening run looking pretty grim. Ran a 11 miler last night, and was feeling sub-7ish lightfooted, but paying for it now. Combined with wet sock, that'll be loads of fun I'm sure.

OK, I should surface again in a few weeks, keep up the good work.

First, Garmin cannot be relied on for precise pacing. Second, you ran on a different road, and that could easily make a difference of 5-10 seconds a mile without you having any clue why. If you did not feel like you were dying on the last mile, and there are no other workout on the same course with land mark splits showing that you were losing it, no need to worry even if Garmin showed slower splits.

Sasha,

Sasha: Same here....same road I normally run, which was why it was pretty easy to reconstruct the pacing for the missing lap. Just seems like Tempo work, including longer intervals, are the toughest workout for me. My coach says that's because I've got a poor LT and it needs the most work, which makes some sense. Just wondering what others thought too.

It still does not make sense that you would race well in a 15 K that is an LT race if your LT was bad. And on top of that, there exists a very convincing opinion in exercise physiology that there is no such thing as LT. You do not slow down because you reach a certain level of lactic acid, but rather because your brain decides for one reason or another that it cannot push anymore. Which I can believe - I've had days when I could not push my heart rate above 153 in a short tempo run, and then be able to hold 163 a week later with the pace and the breathing matching the differences in the heart rate.

And, even if the measurements are accurate, how do you know that 6:27 is a bad pace on that terrain? It is actually very consistent with what I've been getting in my tempos vs races:

10 K race pace 5:18

15 K race pace 5:26 on a bad day

5 mile tempo run pace - 5:25

Maybe the question should be why did the effort seem so much harder for a shorter distance? And maybe I'm over-analyzing things looking for problems where they don't exist...