A.M. Ran with Benjamin and Jeremy. They warmed up with me, then did the start of my tempo. My workout was 2 miles uphill, then 1 mile jogging recovery, and 3 downhill. Jeremy made it to about 900 meters up, the split at 800 was 2:53. Benjamin made it past 1100 all the way to his turnaround. The split at 1000 was 3:35, and at 0.75 4:19. My mile split was 5:50 as the next quarter brought on some serious headwind. The next mile was 5:59, so 11:49.9 for 2 miles. I was feeling tired from yesterday's 18 mile day, and decided to take it a little easier in the 3 mile downhill tempo. First mile was 5:21. Then I fell into a coasting grove where 83 quarters felt good, but anything faster did not, so I coasted like that for 1.5 miles. Second mile was 5:32, and the next 0.5 was 2:46. Consistent, but slow. Passed a guy that wanted me to tell him what I was training for. I did not have either the time or the lung capacity to give him any kind of answer, much less the one that I would have wanted to give him. But I will give it here. The moment you begin to insist on training for concrete immediate goals such as a particular race you reduce yourself to being slower than your potential because training properly involves long-term conditioning. It also involves a change of lifestyle, and a creation of good habits. Thus to say "train for a race" is an erroneous oversimplification of the process. You train to be fit, and when you have the fitness or you want to test your fitness you race. You may introduce race-specific elements into your training to make sure you do well in a race of particular importance. But all of that is minor details compared to the issue of general fitness, which most recreational runners seriously lack ironically due to the mindset of "train for a race". With no race in near view they stop training consistently and lose whatever fitness they may have gained by "training for a race". Without training being a solid year-round process they are not able to progress. With that in mind, I never think too much about which race I am training for. When you are fast, there will always be a race to prove it. I just train to be faster and once in a while I race to evaluate the quality of my training. With 0.5 to go I began to question if I was just holding back, or perhaps maybe I was tricking myself and 5:32 pace was really all I had in me today. So I decided to see if I could speed up to 5:20. The effort was successful. I ran two quarters in 79 each, which gave me 5:24 for the last mile, and 16:17.3 for the 3 miles. Finished the 10.5, then added 2 more with Julia. Jenny took a break to let her muscles and tendons heal. Total of 12.5. P.M. 1 with Joseph and Jacob in 8:34, 2 more with Joseph on a bike. He surprised me by maintaining 7:00 pace on the uphill. Our time was 14:21 for 2 miles.
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