A win or a fail?

I'm going with a positive spin and calling it a win. I'm talking about my speed work run on Wednesday morning.*

I was out for my second run since the Langley Half Marathon on Sunday (recap to come). I did eight miles on Monday, easy but 9:20 average pace, figuring that the DOMS would be setting in soon. Sure enough, my quads were quite a bit stiffer on Tuesday. However, they weren't bad by the next day, which was a much quicker recovery than last year!

On my training plan for Wednesday I prescribed the usual 6-8 miles with 3 x 1-mile repeats at 5K pace. That seemed like a good idea when I came up with it--certainly easier than a longer tempo run. But Now? I had my doubts.

The first question was what to call 5K pace. I decided on 7:45 to 8:00, ideally under 8:00. In a "real" 5K I would hope for 7:30-7:45 pace, but I didn't see that happening. In fact, I questioned whether I could manage faster than 8:15, even.

I started with my two-mile warm-up. I was encouraged when I did it under 20 minutes, but still, it's a big jump from 10-minute pace to 8!

But I sacrificed my lungs to the running gods, and threw myself out there for the first mile...7:50! I was shocked and pleased. I jogged for a quarter mile and then tackled mile 2. Again a pleasant surprise--7:49. Another quarter mile rest.

The last mile was hardest. I was fatigued, and this mile had uphills and a turnaround. I gave it my all--well, most of my all, as much as I could dig up, and finished this one in 8:01, technically two seconds out of range. To make a 5K I tacked on another tenth (unfortunately about 8:30 pace). If you add up all the splits I did the 5K in less than 25 minutes (running, not including the recovery jogs, of course.

Then I ran easy the rest of the way home, for a total distance of 7.5 miles.

So my last speed mile was out of range, but I think the effort was a success overall.


*I actually started writing this on Wednesday night, but fell asleep and had to take it up later. I wrote over the weekend in an area with no signal, now I am hoping to be able to post back in civilization!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad