I was determined to meet my goals on this morning's run, and with a lot of effort I ended up coming pretty close. I kept telling myself I was going to do it but a small voice kept on saying I was missing something. The net result was that I was slower by 2 seconds per mile than my goal for the 6 mile tempo, so from that perspective it's pretty much the same. Mid 40's this morning, perfect weather for a fast run, no danger of overheating. Warmed up with about 2 miles of easy running to get me over to the Starkey Blvd bike trail, then started the tempo portion. Goal: 6 @ 6:32 pace
The pattern was similar to last time (2 weeks ago for 5 miles), first mile was good, I slowly got onto pace and ended up just one second off. Second mile was better at 6:30. Sometime around then my iPod battery died, so no more music, time to just run! 3rd mile saw my pace slipping a bit, I struggled and ended up with 6:39. This brought me to the turn around, pace really started to slip. I was over 7:00 for a bit, clawed my way into the 6:50's, and gave it my all to get to 6:45. I was trying really hard just to let things start flowing. 5th mile was starting out poorly, but I was starting to improve. Saw Keisha heading the other direction and said hi, then saw another runner, things improved and I made mile 5 in 6:35. Here is where I start to feel that a lot of the problem was mental. I thought back to how I have done this pace before and sometimes faster, but maybe I forgot how hard it was and thought I wouldn't have to work as hard this time, which is wrong, on a hard day you need to remember what hard is and deal with it. I soon found myself on pace and then faster than goal pace, I could make up a little bit of the lost time, last mile in 6:21. Splits: 6:33, 6:30, 6:39, 6:45, 6:35, 6:21 Recovered and ran home at an easy pace. Overall average pace: 7:28
| 