Tempo Run

This morning, it was humid and warm, as usual by now. Those who were racing this weekend got to do fartleks, so Richard and Amy left to do that. Frank and Jan got permission to do the 7 mile loop at casual pace instead of the tempo run...Frank nursing a troublesome quad, and Jan just wanted to do 7 miles today. So, that meant that most of my pace partners were doing something different today.

Warmup and drills served their purpose, and we gathered for Gilbert's last words to us. I partnered up with Shannon, and we both made the usual empty promise to run this tempo workout nice and controlled. Gilbert told us that this was not a race, and to try and run it about 15 seconds/mile slower than 10k race pace. That would mean about 7:55 pace for me. My typical pace on this workout has been 7:42/mile, about 30:40-30:50 finish time. I was feeling a little out of sorts, but knew a time somewhere between those two numbers would be just fine.

As the pack sorted itself out in the first mile, I found myself running with Shannon, Margaret, Tony and Tess. We clicked off a first mile in 7:57, and then eased the pace down a bit to 7:40 at the turnaround. Tess turned around at 1.75 miles going out, but finished pretty consistently for her 3.5 mile day. At the turnaround for the rest of us, I pushed the pace a little more, and surprisingly found myself running alone pretty quickly after that. I kept hearing footsteps back behind me, though, and so I didn't turn to see who it might be...I just kept running at my current pace. At mile 3, I clicked off a 7:17 mile, a 23 second drop from mile 2. I crossed the footbridge, and fought off various mental demons in the last mile to finish pretty strong with a 7:38 mile. Final time 30:32, which is faster than I've been in a while. 7:38 pace.

Shannon and Margaret finished together about 20 seconds back. We did 4 striders afterwards, and that was the day. I stretched with Tess, Alex, Chelsea and a new person who I didn't get to know today. It was a good workout day, despite the climate conditions.

Once I got home, I did the core exercises, and I'm glad I did those. The Saturday run is 12 miles or so, and that will be fun to hang out with a bigger long run crew.