Tempo Racing

For the first time in a long time, I joined the herd for a tempo race. Due to a variety of circumstances, it seems that I haven't run one of these with the group since June. That's a little disconcerting. But, on a humid but relatively cool morning, I met up with the Thursday group for the tempo. Just a one mile warmup and then drills, and it was time to get going. It was fun to chat with Mason and Rob as we warmed up. I had no real expectations for the result today, but wanted to run within myself and see where I was to start the marathon training season. My PR for this workout is 28:57, but I hoped to be somewhere around 30:00 today.

In the dark, we were sent off after Gilbert gave us the usual "negative split" advice. The Thursday group is loaded with fast people, so I wasn't shocked to be left in the dust by a very large group of folks at the start. Within the first half mile, I had passed the only Gazelle in sight, and was running alone. It would remain that way for the rest of the run. I saw Chad well ahead, but that remained a mirage for the whole run. So, I settled into a pace, and rolled along. I was a little quicker than I had expected at the one mile mark, which rattled me a little. As a result, I stopped checking the watch after that. Better to run by feel so as to eliminate the self-sabotage that can come with staring down your watch.

I was a little closer to the lead pack than I remembered in the past, and was a little closer to Chad than I had expected at the turnaround. Still, I just kept running my race. For the most part, this whole workout was an exercise in mental toughness. I was not worrying about my legs or conditioning as much as I was fighting the negative impulses that my psyche kept throwing at me. "Slow down!" "This isn't fun!" "Don't press so hard!" For the most part, I was able to fight those off. It was nice to start counting down the 1/4 mile markers, for sure. As always, it was a bit surreal running in the dark on the trail at speed. I had to dodge a bunch of walkers and dog walkers, but nothing that was too bad.

I tried to pick it up a bit for the last mile, and I think I was successful with that. Gathering up all I had left, I pushed all the way to the tape for a very satisfying final time. This was my second best tempo race ever, so that was a huge relief to me. This has been a great week of training lately. I had my best long run in quite a while on Saturday, a "PR" set of 2000m repeats on Monday, and this very strong tempo race today. That makes me very happy.

The numbers: 7:26, 7:25, 7:31, 7:11. 29:33. Avg. pace was 7:23/mile. Slight negative split of just 10 seconds, but it was a negative split.

We did 4 striders afterwards, and then did balance drills and some hopping around with Gilbert. It was a nice workout day. Tomorrow is a cycle/gym day, so that will be a nice break. I did the full stretching with Colleen, and that was that.

I made my way to Gold's after the running, and just did a quick visit for "Essential Exercises" for the legs. I wanted to do the leg series to finish off that work and to help recovery. They felt pretty good.

Total mileage for the day, a modest 6.7 miles, including warmups and drills.