Ran Tinman Tempo today, but it was rather unusual. I ran around Regents Park, and I know it is 2.75 mi. loop. But Garmin was very erratic on my first loop, the average lap pace was jumping wildly and was more of a distraction than help. I knew for sure I could not be running 8:35 pace when I felt like I was running 8:00! But towards the end of the first loop it kind of started showing realistic pace and I saw it drop steadily to 8:08 average. Still I thought I was running faster. Sure enough, Garmin measured first loop at 2.66. I hit the lap button and started on the second loop. Here I saw the other extreme - Garmin was showing 7:20 pace - way too fast, although it was on a slight downhill. Then it got more realistic, but still very fast for this kind of tempo, 7:35. On the last mile, I started feeling tired, and maybe I did push too hard in the beginning, because I did slow down somewhat, but still ran aerobically. Second loop (actually, only 2.3 mi. since I wanted to do 5 miles tempo) was at 7:47 average pace. Very bizzarre, because the effort felt constant throughout but paces were all over the place.
Jogged home with 4x100m strides. When I got home and put 2 loops together, I got 40:00 for 5.1mi - 7:50 average pace. Still too fast.
What makes this run interesting, is that about 2 hours before I headed out, I had a can of RedBull. I never usually drink it, since I don't like all the chemical stuff in it, but today we ran out of all juice, and I didn't want water, so this was the only other choice. While I was drinking it, I realized it's loaded with caffeine and it would be interesting experiment to see how it affects my run. I have to say results are inconclusive, due to Garmin being so unrealiable today, but perhaps I did feel the effects of RedBull, because 7:30 pace felt like 7:55. But again, who knows if it was really 7:30 pace I was running. And who knows how much caffeine stayed in my system 2 hours after I drank it? I need bigger data sample for this experiment.
But it was a good workout, RedBull or not.
Total time 1:07:13 (8:24 avg. pace). | 