9:15pm, 80 degrees and very humid. 1.5 mile warm up in 11:36 (7:44s). 4.75 in 32:38 (6:52s). .65 in 5:42 (8:45s). Then 1.5 in 11:47 (7:51s). Total run 8.4 in 1:01:45 (7:21s). The speedy portion of this run was a bit of work tonight. The humidity and dinner was working on me. I just have to find a better way to combine dinner and running. 2 hours between eating and running doesn't seem to do it. I've always been one who needs to run on a relatively empty stomach.
So, I thought that maybe I was just working too hard to only be doing 6:52s. I took the car out to measure the distance. Ugh. I should have just stuck with what I had. I knew the route I ran was 5.4 miles (4.75 + .65). However, it appears that it was more like 4.65 and . 75. So this makes the speedy portion even slower. New ppm should be 4.65 in 32:38 (7:01s) and .75 in 5:42 (7:36s). This seems more accurate, because I did not think that when I eased off the pace I dropped off nearly 2 minutes/mile. But this is a big downer to some extent. I do need to consider the heat and humidity as factors, but I wouldn't say they were any different from last thursday when I was able to bang out 5.6 miles at an average pace of 6:43. The difference must be two-fold between these two runs. First I was probably better hydrated last Thursday and Second I was running about 4 hours after dinner instead of 2. Night runs are essentially the way to go here in St Louis so I guess I'm either going to have to eat very light and then again after the run, or run later. I also need to consider the possibility that I've done too many quicker miles lately. I've had to break up my runs a bit lately due to time constraints, so when I'm only going 4 miles at a time I have a natural tendency to pick up the pace. I'm curious as to how this plays into the sort of neurological stress that Sasha often talks about. I know that studies indicate that if you take 2 groups of runners and they run the same mileage/day, but 1 group does 2-a-days and the other group just 1 run, the 2-a-day group has a tendency to get a quicker LT/AT pace as a result. I'll post a thread about this on the message board.
Nike Elite - 168.85 | 