This week so far

Running this week has gone well. Even though the weather stayed warm on Monday and Tuesday, both days I went out early to run and the heat didn't affect me at all. I adjusted my usual running schedule for this week, so Monday was a recovery run, Tuesday was speedwork, Thursday (tomorrow) is planned to be a "special" birthday run, and Friday is a medium-long run as usual. (Saturday will be a long run.)

In the last few weeks I've been doing some block to block fartleks during my Monday runs, to add a little excitement and boost my overall pace. I was going to do the same thing this Monday, but instead I decided to do a "practice" of my 4.5 mile birthday run tomorrow.

I started with a slow warm-up mile. (I'm going to try to limit the warm-up to half a mile tomorrow.) Then I launched into my effort to do the next 4.5 miles in 45 minutes. That's obviously a 10-minute mile pace, which shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, but it is still a challenge to average an exactly 10-minute pace over a short distance!

Mile 1 - 10:11
Mile 2 - 9:59
Mile 3 - 9:57
Mile 4 - 10:02
.5 mile - 4:47

Total - 4.5 miles in 44:56. Score! Now to replicate that tomorrow....

I went on to finish 8.16 miles total (8.16 on 8/16), average pace 9:54.

Tuesday was speedwork Wednesday a day early. Seven 800's (half miles) at 10K pace.

After 3.3 miles of warm-up, I hit the track.

1 - 4:03 (8:07 pace)
2 - 4:00 (7:57 pace)
3 - 3:59 (7:56 pace)
4 - 3:58 (7:47 pace for .51 mile)
5 - 3:56 (7:54 pace)
6 - 4:00 (8:01 pace)
7 - 3:52 (7:38 pace)

I jogged .2 - .25 mile recovery in between each lap, except after #5, where I cut the recovery to .1 mile to save time. Apparently that was not enough recovery time, hence the slower pace on lap 6 (after which I returned to a longer recovery).

Total - 8.5 miles at 9:18 average pace overall.

Tomorrow is the "official" 4.5 mile birthday run!