not giving up on the comeback

The wife had the kids for a while so I did all my miles for the day in one run.  I felt good after the day off.  I just made a new route- trying to get it to 10 miles or so.  That pace felt really good today. 

9.95 - 7:25 pace

Tempo day - 77 deg and barely any wind. 

Two miles of warm-up.  I went to the Druid hills area to see how my tempo pace felt on the hills. Last year I did a couple of my tempo runs here and I wanted to see how it went this year. 

I settled into a nice pace and tried to hold it.  I didn't look at my mile splits.  I was at 12:24 for two miles and then 24:39 for 4 miles.  The last bit is a decent rise so I was pretty gassed at the end.  

Two miles cool down

Tempo  - 4 miles - 6:10 ave pace

PM - 4.45 miles recovery run 7:35 pace

lunchtime miles - 4.6 felt great if a little tired in the legs from yesterday.  81 degrees - pretty day but I'm liking running in the 60s or 70s now.  

4.6 miles 7:00 average pace

 PM miles - hungry and a bit tired but otherwise it was ok

4.85 miles 7:14 pace

Felt a little tired today but I managed to get through it pretty ok.  It was much better than last week's Thursday run. 

7:19 pace over 11.1 miles.  

72 degrees and overcast is wonderful for this time of year.  I love it!

It was just a short run at lunch to get the blood moving for the day.  I felt great at times and klunky at other times.  Hopefully I feel great for the race tomorrow and not klunky.  Luckily, the excitement and adrenaline of race day usually makes the klunky feeling go away. 

4.5 - 7:13 ave pace

Today was the 10 mile training check-up race for the fall.  My attitude today was to go out and get to as close to 6:00 pace average as I could.  McMillan predictor from my 5K time in February said I should hit a 6:10 pace for a 61 min and change.  I just wanted to go with the flow of the field and saw what happened.  
The first mile was a bit of a surprise, cause I didn't think we were going so fast, but it was a 5:54.  It wasn't my intent, but I'll take it.  I pulled up on one guy who smoked me at track night in May and then I smoked him in the last 5K.  I didn't was to lose to him, so I stuck with for the next few miles.  Somewhere between 3 and 4 miles I got a few steps on him and from there it was a matter of running like someone was chasing me.  The next guy was probably 200-300 yards in front of me.  I could only see him at the long straightaways so I knew I wasn't going to catch him.  I just tried to calm myself as much as possible and maintain the effort.  Somehow between 4 and 6 I gained about a minute.  I was slightly over 6 min pace at the 3 mile mark, and then I looked up at 6 miles and I was in the low 35:00s.  No wonder I couldn't hear the guy behind me anymore.  So I hung on and tried to hold off the guy behind me and of course, not blow up.  
In the end, I held off the dude behind me and I rolled in with a surprise time of 59:09 - 3rd place overall - 2nd place in AG.  Of course the 2nd place guy was in my age group - no breaks for me today.  On a good side-note, all of us in my AG were under 60 minutes, which blew away the AG's.  Nice job 35-39's!