A.M. 20 miles with a 5 mile tempo in the middle. Same course as last week - Fast Running Blog 5 Miler course starting at the Utah Lake. I decided to start out a bit faster on purpose, then ease off without easing too much, and then give it a push for the second half. For one reason or another I found this approach more appealing. Perhaps it is psychological. A slower starting out pace still feels hard and I start doubting my ability to keep it, which makes me slow down even more. If I start out faster, I do not worry about the slowdown because I have some capital in the bank to spend, and then I have a reason to fight the slowdown because I do not want to waste my capital. The strategy produced good results today. First mile was 5:30. Then 5:40 (minor uphill). 14:05 at the turnaround, and the third mile in 5:45 (16:55 for 3 miles). I told myself - do not lay a goose egg on the quarter before the turnaround, but I did regardless running it in 89. However, I was able to kick into gear soon, and after a couple of transitional quarters started hitting 83s consistently like a clock. The 4th mile was 5:33 (22:28), and now I was on schedule to catch the 28:00 guy (5:36 pace) if only I could hold 83s. I hit the next 3 quarters in 83. I wanted to hit close to 80 in the penultimate quarter, but it did not work out. I think if I had somebody with me it would have happened easily. But with a quarter to go I was mad that I did not get that split, and gave it a more diligent push, which gave me 80 for the last quarter, 5:29 for the last mile, and 27:57.3 for the whole run. This is the first time I cracked 28:00 on this tempo run this year. Ran home making it the total of 14 so far, then 5 more with Benjamin. Then I had one more mile left. I saw I need to run 5:34 to get sub-7:00 average for 20. It was going to be a stretch. I could probably have run a nice straight mile in 5:34 just fine, but it was not the mile I was running. It had a total of 10 90 degree turns and one 180 which I find very annoying when fatigued. But I tried anyway and managed 5:46. This gave me 2:20:12 for 20 miles. Jenny and Julia did 1 mile. Joseph and Jacob did 0.5. P.M. 2 miles.
|