Marathon Week 3, Day 3

I was part of the Santa Anita / Grandview group this morning using a 3-mile loop — with considerable hills — for the 2-3-1 tempo run that Jagarnaut describes. The loop takes us down to the two-mile marker as warm-up, and then we hit our short-tempo pace for one full loop of three miles, finishing that leg back at the 2-mile marker. A final one-mile cool-down returns us to the starting point near Grandview and Santa Anita. My target for the three miles was to maintain 6:55 per mile, which should have sent me around in 20:45. But what I lost on the uphill stretches, I could not make up on the downhill. I finished in 21:34, a pace of 7:11 per mile. With the climbs included in this run, maybe I accomplished the spirit of the short-tempo run despite not keeping pace.

Originally posted at Marathon Week 3, Day 3