Five Miles at Mid-Tempo Pace
I saved a half gallon of gas and got an extra hour of sleep by staying in Pasadena for my five-mile mid-tempo run this morning (rather than meeting the 6:00am group at the Middle School).
Following a Pasadena route (why doesn’t it let me print for free?!!), I set out to maintain a 7:10 per-mile pace, which should have had me finishing at the 35:50 mark. There are some elevation changes in the route, but despite these, I was able to hold the 7:10 pace pretty closely both on the uphill portions and on the level parts. On top of that, I allowed myself to open up a little on the downhill stretches, which brought my finish time down to 34:07.
Notes from the run:
- The start challenged me. Heading to my starting point, I was nowhere near feeling like I had the energy to do this one today, but I went through with it anyway, taking about 400m to dial in my pace. About a half mile in, I felt much better. The 800m repeats earlier in the week did not make this first half-mile easy, they did help convince me I could put in nine more of them to finish the run.
- About 3.5 miles in, my quads started getting a little too warm, but that cleared up by Mile 4.
- So far in the training, I have hit all of my target times, but I am not about to change my marathon goal of 3:20:00 yet! Reassess sometime after Week 6, not after Week 2.
Congratulations to all of the CrossFit/Bootcamp racers today in the Bleksmith 5K!
On schedule for Saturday: A 6-mile group run from Kersting Court at 8:22 per mile. It will be interesting to add more than a minute over today’s pace to each mile of the run.