After Tuesday’s warm tempo-paced suffering and the bit of rethinking I did yesterday, I decided to go out and try to put in 4 real tempo miles today and just see how the pace worked itself out.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I did have a goal, which was 7:15 miles, but I wanted to make sure not to sacrifice the lactate threshold purpose of the tempo run. To reign myself in I tried to keep my breathing very steady in the two strides in, one out pattern. How did I do?

Start Time: 4PM. Had to go out a bit earlier than usual since we stared moving Suz yesterday. Luckily it was hot but also quite dry, only around 30% humidity, so it was comfortable.
Distance: 6 miles total.
Time: Splits were around 7:45, 7:18, 7:14, 7:11, 7:04, 8:05, so around 46:27 for the whole thing.
Workout Structure: Easy start and finish miles, sandwiching 4 miles at tempo pace, and today I think that I actually did these right. They didn’t feel horribly uncomfortable; I mean, they weren’t fun, but in a race situation I could have probably done 4 more of them, so it’s close to a pace I can hold for an hour. The negative splits just happened really, which is interesting.
Pre-Run: Usual stretching and water consuming.
Notes: Again, the negative splits were interesting. I have noticed this about myself when running that sometimes it takes me a few miles to warm up, but I was trying to keep the effort fairly constant. Interesting. Maybe the negative split run should become a weekly staple?
Post-Run: A quick cool-down so that I could get started with Suzanna’s move.

Tomorrow it’s time for the last 5 miles of the week, what should be a fairly “nice” Fartlek, assuming the weather cooperates…