Plan was to do 1-mile warmup, then 6 at HMP, then 1-mile cooldown. Drove to Liberty Park so my pace would be honest. Unfortunately, it was a little too honest for me--the pace was much slower than the effort felt. On top of that, I was only able to handle 4 miles before popping. Not sure what was going on, but my heart rate was way higher than it should have been for the target pace (5:55), and the actual pace was far slower than my target. I have to admit that I questioned the accuracy of the Garmin today. (I did update the device software over the weekend and initially had a problem with it.) Compared to past interval workouts at Liberty Park, it seemed like each of today's mile splits came about 0.1-0.2 later than I was expecting. It was probably just because I was going slower than the effort felt, though. At any rate, here are the tempo splits:
Mile 2: 6:00 (167 bpm) (I expected a split of 5:40-5:45)
Mile 3: 6:13 (178 bpm--way too high if the split is correct)
Mile 4: 6:11 (180 bpm)
Mile 5: 6:08 (181 bpm)
With my HR so high and my splits so much slower than my target, I decided to cut the tempo short and cool down. Maybe I'll have to do Wednesday's tempo somewhere else where I know the mile markers so I can figure out whether I was just off today or whether the problem was the Garmin. | 