Practice To Suffer So Racing Becomes Easy

Morning:  10.75 miles with Griffin Hwy K loop with in-town add.  Avg 7:36 pace.  Nice and cool.

Morning:  Hwy M 7.63 miles steady pace, but naturally progressed down to 6:26 pace + 5 striders.  Avg pace 6:49 - Nice and cool, light rain during the striders

Evening:  11.94 miles on Glacial River Trail with Andrew.  Did a 4x3k w/1k moderate pace shooting for 30 sec slower than intervals on recoveries.  I ran too fast on intervals and too slow on the recoveries, but did a good job keeping things steady throughout the workout.  Temps right around 80 and low humidity.

3K's 3:41, 3:41, 3:45, 3:44  Avg 3:42k/5:57mi

Avg 1K recoveries  4:20k/6:58mi

Avg run pace 6:29mi 

Workout turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be.  I think I was a little low on energy today.

Morning:  6.98 slow miles in town + 5 striders Avg 7:58

Evening:  8.38 mile progression run from 7:59 down to 5:39 pace.  The legs were a little sluggish, but they woke up along the way.  Cool temps - Avg pace 6:52

Evening:  5.08 easy miles in town loop + 5 striders.  Avg 7:31 

Just what I was hoping for.  Not far off my best on a more difficult course.  Ran very even splits.  Just missed top 10, but finished with some gas in the tank.  Should be a quick recovery.

Today was nice and cool with low humidity.  It made for some fast times this year.  You never know what kind of temps you'll get in WI this time of year, we really lucked out.  The plan was to run even splits and keep the race within limits, which is exactly what I did.  I'm running 2 more 1/2's in Sept. along with a 30K, so it was important to come out healthy and feel like I could do more.  I certainly didn't want to put myself in a hole with this race because the main focus is marathon training for the Twin Cities Marathon.

The race split into 2 groups and I led the 2nd pack through the 1st 2 miles running 5:40-5:50 pace.  My goal was to average in the 5:40's, my watch says I went 5:47 pace - officials results say 5:52.  I'll pretend I was in the 5:40's.  I was able to count my place on a downhill through mile 2 and figured I was in 14th or 15th place.  I dropped all the way back to 25th as people made some strong moves in the early miles, but battled my way back into 10th place with even pace running.  I would get passed by 2 runners in the last mile, but passed one back for 11th overall.  I was really happy with this race for a couple of reasons.  #1  I felt I didn't run a smart race at Grandma's 1/2 and I wanted to prove I could run smart.  #2 I didn't change my training intensity or volume for the race, but still managed to finish about 20 seconds off my best time on a much more difficult course than Grandmas.  #3 I finished with gas in the tank, so it shouldn't impact my marathon training too much.

Splits went:

5:42, 5:39, 5:51, 5:50, 5:49, 5:45, 5:54, 5:50, 5:45, 5:56, 5:39, 5:45, 5:53, with 5:02 pace for the last .2 = 5:47 avg pace, which would be 1:15:50ish for 13.1.  Maybe this was a PR if the course was long??