10 miles @ 8:37/mi. Murdock canal north solo @ 3:30pm.
My running buddies were not available in the morning, and I wanted to get an early start to help Karen with some holiday preparations...and it was cold...so I postponed my AM run. About 3:00pm Karen and the girls went shopping so I decided to head out for a 10 mile run before the BYU football game at 5pm.
I decided to try to push the pace a little. After the first warmup (uphill) mile I held marathon pace effort for miles 2-5. This was mostly into a strong, cold headwind from the north. The key thing I wanted to do was to push miles 6-9 at threshold pace on the way back, before cooling down the last mile.
My splits were:
Warmup: 9:13 (uphill)
Marathon pace: 8:50, 8:55, 9:04, 9:26 (very slight downhill, headwind)
Threshold: 7:49, 7:58, 7:58, 7:49 (very slight uphill, tailwind)
Cooldown: 9:03 (downhill)
The cold headwind made the marathon pace miles a little more challenging. I was nervous about how much faster, if at all, I would be able to push miles 5-9. Turning around at mile 5 out of the headwind to a tailwind helped much more than I had anticipated. I feel good abaout hold sub-8:00 pace for 4 miles.
Part of the run today was to prepare mentally...and physically...for the 4 mile Earn Your Turkey run I signed up for on Thanksgiving morning. It looks like I should be able to run sub-8:00 pace if I work hard. I'm sort of hoping race day magic might get me closer to 7:30 pace and running the 4 miles in sub-30 minutes. Make it or not, I'm looking forward to the opportunity.
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