Tempo Run

I'll slowly catch back up on the blog, but today we gathered on a typical weather morning for our monthly tempo run. The 1.2 mile warmup was nice and relaxed, and then we drilled on the trail, trying not to take over the trail and force oncoming runners to scatter to the sidelines. I think we did a good job of being nice neighbors. Anyway, as usual, the task was to go out at about 80% and return faster than that on the 4 mile course. I made my usual pact with Shannon and Amy that I didn't feel up to a really fast pace, and that little pack of three took off behind the greyhounds but ahead of some newer folks.

The first mile was indeed slow, at 8:16. Amy pulled away from Shannon and me towards the end of mile one, and got about 70 yards ahead eventually. I picked up the pace during mile two, and slowly started catching Amy, more or less as a mental exercise. Shannon eventually fell back a bit, and I continued my little race with Amy. By the turnaround, I was about 10 yards back, after a 7:40 second mile. I kept up the pace, and caught and passed Amy about halfway through mile 3, and crossed the footbridge for mile 3 for a 7:37 split. At that point, my goal was to keep it up and try to have an even faster mile 4. I was successful, I think, with a 7:42 last mile (the mile 2 and 3 splits are about 50 yards short of a true mile), but my overall time was 31:15, about a minute slower than my "PR" for this workout. Considering my casual approach to running in July, that was okay with me. I'm rested and ready to tackle Freescale marathon training now, and I am enjoying running. Overall pace for the tempo run was 7:49, which is really pretty slow for me.

We finished it off with 5 striders (100 yds), and then we were done. For the day, right at 6 miles, and it was a good workout for me. I did just a little stretching afterwards, but had to get home to take the kids to summer band camp. Gilbert told me to run the full 14 miles on Saturday, or at least to start out thinking that, and if I wanted to cut it short, I could cut back across the Pfluger bridge for about 12. There's a new piece that they've added at the end of the usual Longhorn Dam loop that Gilbert wants me to see, I suppose.

I must admit that I miss the Chicago marathoners on the weekday workouts. Most of my main peeps are in that group, and it's just different without them on Tuesday/Thursday. I'll catch up with them on Saturday after the long run.