7 Mile Pace Run

Today, I met up with Alex at RunTex at 6:00am for a pace run. Gilbert's instructions to us were to do 2 miles easy, and then to "go!" for the last 5 miles. The trick would be to see how Alex and I differed as to what "easy" pace would be. This was also the first run in my latest pair (lucky 13th?) of Mizuno Wave Creation shoes. These are the latest iteration of that shoe model, the Creation 6, in a nice white, blue and gray color scheme. My late winter/spring pair have now been retired, reaching the magic 350 mile mark, and my spring/summer pair are pretty close to being finished, at 310 miles. I'll use the spring/summer shoes for this weekend's long run, and after that, they'll be used for workouts like the circuit and for the easy 30-40 minute runs on Wednesdays. Alex was also sporting a new pair of shoes. Maybe that's why we ran so fast? The fall marathoners left earlier from RunTex to take the long warmup to Meriden for their 1000m repeats, so we didn't see them before we got started.

We went counter-clockwise on the standard I-35 loop on the trail, and the first two miles were indeed nice and easy. Paces for those were 9:26 and 8:57, and my HR was bubbling along at a nice subdued rate. When the GPS watches alerted us to 2 miles, Alex announced that it was time to pick it up, and he promptly left me in the dust. That shouldn't be a surprise, since he's faster than me, but I usually pick up the pace mile by mile on these pace runs instead of immediately dropping the pace like he does. I gamely hung within 20-30 yards of him until the end of mile 3 (first pace mile), and after that, he slowly pulled away for the rest of the run, eventually finishing some 3 minutes and change ahead of me.

I felt strong, but the trick today was to quiet the demons in my head and try to allow my body to do the work without the brain getting in the way. During mile 5 and 6, especially, I had to do some serious mental work to maintain my pace and effort. No water stops, no resting, just rolling along, I kept picking out people to catch and chase. That helped distract me enough to push hard all the way to the finish.

I ended up with just over 6.9 miles of running, average pace of 8:16/mile, 57:11 total time for the loop. I'm pretty sure this was a record for me on this loop, but I'll have to do some serious review to determine that. The 5 pace miles were clicked off at an average mile pace of 7:53/mile, which is fast for me. My splits for the pace miles were: 7:42 pace (.92 miles), 7:50, 7:52, 7:59, and 8:02 for the last mile. I prefer it when my pace improves all the way to the finish, but those numbers are consistent enough, even if they tail off a little towards the end. That first pace mile was when I was trying to stay with Alex, of course.

A good workout, and afterwards, we stretched and chatted with Pete (who did a 10 mile pace run), Kim, Carrie, Jason and Frank. Those last 4 folks all were finishing up the marathoners' workout at Meriden, which is our destination for Tuesday. It was a fun morning, especially once the pace run was over.