Tempo Run

I took Wednesday off after Wilke, even though my legs felt pretty good. I did some easy stretching while on errands.

This morning, on a dreary sort of weather situation (temps mild at 50 degrees, though), we met for a 4 mile tempo run, sort of checkup workout to see where we are. We're always told to run it at 80% effort, but we tend to push it harder than that. It's a little tricky running fast in the dark on the trail, but it turns out okay. On warmups, I was hanging at the back of the tribe, letting my legs warmup nice and easy. Drills were uneventful, but I felt fine.

At the gun for the tempo, I found myself dead last. I soon got rolling, and passed the first couple of people by the quarter mile mark. They had gone out too fast, and would pay for their error later. I rolled up on a few more folks, and then by about the half mile marker, I was tucked in with Margaret as we made our way on the trail. My first mile split was a relatively sedate 7:57. I figured we'd start picking it up a bit in the second mile. However, at the turnaround and 2 miles, I was exactly at 16:00, 8:00/mile. I felt really good, though, and so accelerated away from Margaret and Caitlin, thinking they'd be right behind me. I knew I was moving well in mile 3, but was surprised to see a 7:22 split for mile 3. I tried to find new people to chase, and started picking off people on the trail that weren't part of our group, just as a game. The last two guys I was chasing were caught with less than a half mile to go, and I pushed all the way to the finish, hitting a 7:31 split for mile 4. Overall, not a tempo run "PR," but a big negative split and a very respectable 30:52 (7:43/mile average pace) for the day.

We finished it off with a short cooldown jog and then 6 strides on the grass. Total day 6.5 miles, 8:22 average pace.