Goodbye to PIM

Tonight was the last run for Power in Motion. It's hard to believe ten weeks have already passed! Joining PIM was a great decision as it is an excellent organization and just what I needed to get running.

There was a "treasure hunt" tonight but the instructions were lengthy and convoluted so Joe led us on a loop at Memorial. We covered the 2.9 miles in 25:52 for an 8:55 pace. Stephanie was assigned a different group tonight. There were only three of us who stayed with Joe.

After the loop, Jonathan and Julie joined us (after their Kenyan Way workout) and we gave small tokens of appreciation to Stephanie and Joe. I'm very impressed by the time and commitment they made to help us. Clearly they could easily have spent their time on their own training or other personal pursuits but they gave their time and experience to us each Wednesday night for the past 10 weeks.

After the goodbye's, I took a loop on my own. I optimistically programmed my watch for 1/4 mile splits that would put me on a 7:40 pace. That was aggressive on my part after already running then cooling down but I wanted to see how long I could "gut it out". Here are the 1/4 mile splits I ended up with:

0.25 1:55
0.50 1:51
0.75 1:51
1.00 2:00
1.25 1:58
1.50 2:00
1.75 2:01
2.00 2:01
2.25 2:00
2.50 2:03
2.65 1:18 (note only .15 mile rather than .25 due to quirky 2.9 total distance)
2.90 2:00

I was happy with my consistency. At least for me this was a very consistent run which is the point of a good tempo run. My average pace for the 2.9 miles was 7:55 - only slightly outside of the optimal "McMillan training zone" of 7:30 - 7:50.

Of course while making the loop, I realized that I'm running a 5K race tomorrow night. I'm sure that by pushing my tempo run that I hurt my chances at a strong performance tomorrow. Hopefully weather is comfortable for the evening race.