Friday, May 12, 2006

Trying to find my tempo

As I posted in my training plan, my tempo runs are supposed to be around the 7:35-7:40 pace per mile. Tonight the weather was windy and it looked like there was going to be heavy rain, so I decided that this would be a good time to try a tempo run and get home fairly quickly.

My first mile went by in 6:52. I thought, "Woo, a little too fast. But it felt good. Try and slow down some."
Mile two: 7:16. "Hmm, slower, but still too fast. Alright, I don't want to get rained on and there's a nice tail wind, tonight will be a hard run. What have I got in me?"
Mile three: 6:56. "Holy moly. 3 miles in 21:04, that's quick."
Mile four: 6:51. "27:54 for four miles? That's a sub-seven average!" It's a 6:58.5 to be exact.

And the tank was not empty, I could have gone further. Clearly there has been improvement over the winter. Last year, my fastest run home was 28:40 (7:10 pace), I think this is a sign of good things to come.

So it looks like I've got some self control to work on in these tempo runs. But I enjoyed the hard run and it didn't rain.

No comments: