Me and my screwed up pacing. Right foot felt better after last night's URD, although not completely pain-free, and I decided to go do the threshold run I skipped last night. Plan was for 2 X 10 minutes at something between HMP and 10K pace. HMP, as you may recall, was 7:36 at Bentonville. The 10K pace based on that VDOT level, according to attackpoint.org's calculator, is 7:13. So I planned to run something in the 7:25-7:30 range. Uh, no.
First problem is that I didn't take the Garmin off autolap. Obviously 10 minutes at that pace is going to be more than a mile, so autolap will click after the first mile, and then restart the lap pace. So if I look at my watch in the last 2.5 minutes of the run, it will reflect my pace for that last segment, but not reflect the first mile of the interval. All of which led me to run a 7:17 pace for the first 10 minutes. Of course, I didn't know that until I got home and did the math. After a 2-minute recovery walk/jog, started the second 10 minutes. I thought I was being more conservative on that one than the first one. Evidently not. I ran that first mile in 7:15 and then got even faster in the last 2:45 of the segment, to come out with a 7:12 average -- faster than 10K pace at 45.4 VDOT. That pace would be a 22:32 5K, which is only 35 seconds over my PR.
Oh well. I got the intervals done, even if they were faster than planned, jogged home to finish 7.16, and the foot doesn't feel too bad. I think I'll survive. | 