Buttsweat Towel© season has begun

7:56 average pace.  Started out just trying to do an easy run today but after 3 miles I decided to go catch the "8-minute girl" as April says.  Yes, my invisible pace person is a girl.  Anyway, caught her at the 6 mile mark and dusted her off with a 7:30 to finish.  That'll teach her.

Stamina day.  2 mile warmup, 4 tempo miles @ 7:30 target (10KGP), 1 cooldown mile.  Thought it would be tougher as I haven't done 4 miles @ tempo before but it was fine.  Splits were 8:28, 8:33, 7:28, 7:17, 7:17, 7:00, 7:47.  7:15 average for the tempo, 7:41 for the whole run.  I didn't notice I had a chance to break 7 in the last mile until there was only .05 left so I took off but it was too late to get it.  Also, it was unplanned, but I ended up doing the cooldown @ HMGP to simulate mile 10 or 11 of the half.

So, yeah, the pace was faster in my 4 mile tempo today than in my 5k race...what a dummy.  Today the wind was from the south @ 15mph.  So I paid close attention to the pace on each leg around my university loops and tried to maintain an even effort.  Going south I was running 7:45s and going north 6:55s.  The crosswind legs were about 7:10.  So, doing the math I came up with an approximation of the effect of wind on distance running.  Looks like +2 sec/mile for every 1 mph of direct headwind, and -1 sec/mile for every 1 mph of direct tailwind.  So for example, if you're running directly into a 10mph head wind, your pace will be 20 sec/mile slower.  Let me know what y'all think of the accuracy of that with your experience.  My guess is that there is not an exact linear relationship like that formula would imply; it's probably somewhat exponential, similar to a gas mileage curve which shows you getting dramatically worse gas mileage after 50 mph or so.  But my brain isn't big enough to work that into a formula for running.

Applying that linear relationship to my Saturday disaster, my first mile would've been in the 6:20-6:30 range with no wind, probably close to a 1-mile PR for me.  Makes sense that I was unable to move it for the last 2 miles of the race.  Now that I feel like a complete nerd, I'll end the entry.

EZ 5 @ 8:20 avg.

Couldn't come up with anything interesting so I decided to do 3 fast half-miles at the end of miles 2, 3 and 4.  I figured out how to set the Garmin auto lap to 0.5 mi which was a feat for me (it still took me 5 minutes to find that option).  Anyway, the fast half-miles were 3:27, 3:13 and 3:06.  The first was into a headwind and the other two were tailwinds.  The rest of the run was 8:40s pace and the average for the entire 5.0 was 8:06.

I'm always surprised at how long a half mile is, and in each one I had to slow down because I was tired.  Still need to build a lot more stamina.

EZ 4 @ 8:17 pace.

Naturally, for my long run tomorrow "extreme winds" are in the forecast.

According to Weather.com, the winds were from the west, 24-39 mph, though it didn't feel quite that bad.  Temperature was 60 when I left and 69 by the end.  The good news was that I could use my favorite north-south highway to the lake and hopefully get mostly crosswinds.  My splits were 8:21, 8:08, 8:21, 8:18, 8:18, 8:18, 8:37, 8:14, 8:26, 8:23, 8:28, 8:28, 8:40, 8:39.  I hit the HM in 1:49:4x and total time running was 1:57:39 (8:24 avg).

I don't know why I can't start these runs a little slower.  I should probably be doing them at 9:00 pace so I wouldn't be so wasted at the end.  For the very last mile, I tried to speed it up to 8:00 (HMGP) but at 13.5 the needle went to empty and I crashed to almost 10:00 pace for the last half mile.  Whoops.  I'm starting to get too familiar with that feeling.  Next week I gotta slow down a bit so I can finish stronger.  This time I think dehydration played a role too; 20 oz must not be enough for me to do a 2-hour run when it's almost 70 degrees because my pee was an interesting color.  But I probably wouldn't have sweated so much if I had gone slower at first.  What feels like an easy long-run shuffle at mile 2 is an impossible sprint at mile 12.

Anyway, I think I got good training out of the run but it's a step backwards in my confidence level at breaking 1:45 next month.  Next week I'll focus on longer mid-week runs and only go 13 on Saturday, at a slower pace hopefully.

WM - 42.0