Thursday, April 8, 2010

11- Tempo-Tastic!

Well, winter has returned to Michigan! Today there were super high winds and the temp kept dropping until by 6pm, the wind chill was in the low 30s! Yuck! Cloudy, cold, and windy.


My running bud from my Thursday night group and I had planned/agreed to do a tempo today at run club. Let me tell you, the idea sounded a lot better on Tuesday night after an 80 degree easy run! I was nervous about it all day, and we both were unsure about how it would go when we met up. But, we decided just to put in the effort and see what happens. I’ve done zero tempo running this training cycle and I’m not really good at feeling out pace. He wanted to go 6:50 miles for 5 miles. Sooo, we set off into the wind for a mile warm up.  It. Was. Intense.  Suddenly it was time to start the tempo- we both laughed because it was the one time the warmup felt fast- when we were dreading the start!  Atleast we had turned at this point and were perpendicular to the wind.  We fell into pace naturally.  He looked at his Garmin more than me, and I just tried to look when the mile splits beeped.  We ran a familiar loop of dirt roads, so the footing was soft, but decent and it was *relatively* flat.  Here's the breakdown:

6:32
6:43
6:42
6:50
6:47

I didn't break down the average pace, cuz I'm bad at mental math!  With the slow warmup and cooldown miles, it was a 7:14 average.  Looks like the tempo average was in the 6:43ish range?  We were both really proud of this- better than we planned and more so considering the conditions and the fact that we both had little tempo experience.  It felt hard, but not killer-hard- which I think is a good sign?  Overall, satisfying.  Glad to have that one in the books!  Will mentally draw upon it during tough times at Boston....

I'm pacing another friend in a half marathon Saturday!  Should be fun!

Off to bed for me.  Lots of work, and hopefully running and swimming for me tomorrow starting bright and early at the bakery!

PS: Random moment that made my day- One of my favorite students said to me "Ms. M- you were the one teacher I missed over break!"  Too cool- one of the moments where being a teacher feels good!

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