I really solid workout this morning. In keeping with my goal of doing more workouts with other people I was able to cajole John Timeus to come up from Kent and run the workout with me this morning. Even one person makes a workd of difference.
The workout was a 9-mile run with the first 6 miles at 5:25, the next two at 5:15 and the final one "all out" hoping for a 5:08.
We finally had some sun but the temp was 29 degrees to start so I decided to wear double gloves, a long sleeve shirt with a fleece pullover and running pants. Not exactly conducive to a fast workout. But I was warm!
I shed the fleece just after mile 1 and had no warmth problems the entire way. I even shed the outer glove layer at mile seven.
We ran the fix six miles on my RR Days 10k course which, except for a bridge crossing, is very flat. There is a turnaround just before mile 4 which accounts for the slowest of the six miles but it's a good course to workout on with very little traffic. First six splits were: 5:28, 5:22, 5:18, 5:28, 5:19, 5:19.
I was feeling pretty strong at this point despite having taken the lead position the whole way. There was no real wind to speak of other than what I was creating myself but it is nice when you can trade off the lead.
We reached the 6-mile mark and ran at basically the same speed back to the start line of the 5k/10k and hit it hard again for the final three miles. The final three splits were 5:17, 5:12, 5:14. I was very happy with the the 5:17 and 5:12 but knew going into the final mile that 5:08 was going to be very improbable. That said, I was perfectly fine with the 5:14 to finish up a strong workout in less then ideal weather and clothing conditions.
I was also very grateful to John for making the 30-minute trip up to run with me. | 