Thursday, June 7, 2007

87° and 73%

You know when the title of the blog is the weather conditions that it must have been a bad workout! Of course, these are just excuses for what's to follow ... justification.

On today's schedule was a tempo run. When planning today's workout, I cut the distance and ramped up the intensity. So I ended up with 5.8 miles (two loops at Memorial Park) with a pace in the 7:25 - 7:45 range.

Reality wasn't anywhere close to the plan!

I did get to see Jonathan tonight and he let me use his Garmin Forerunner 305 for the run. Our schedules synced up for us to run together tonight. It was good to see him again. He's coming off a 5K PR last Saturday. He's been working hard in the Kenyan Way training program. I think I'll end up with Kenyan Way as soon as I get this marathon "nonsense" out of the way!

We started out fast ... too fast for the conditions. Both for us knew that it wouldn't last long. After gutting out a very challenging workout last night, Jonathan dropped back. (Of course, I had taken an easy run last night anticipating tonight's tough one.... That theory didn't sustain me for long!) With the Garmin pacing me, I was determined to keep the pace under 7:45 for as long as possible. The backside of Memorial was shady so that helped keep the sun off me. I stayed in the targeted zone for the second mile but felt it slipping during the third. I tried prodding myself along faster but there wasn't much there. The question of whether I could complete a second loop was already formulating before I had finished the first. I decided to pull it back and try quarter mile intervals (fast-slow-fast-slow). That helped until about the second rep to go fast. There was nothing there so I just slowed it down. I checked the Garmin and figured I'd go out until the return would make 5 total miles rather than the planned two loops for 5.8. I came back to the start ... slowing all the while ....

Here are the mile splits:
  • 7:35
  • 7:37
  • 8:12
  • 8:53
  • 9:46

5 miles @ 8:25 pace

After I finished, I really felt like I was overheating. I went to the car for water. The run seemed like it had really overstressed my body. Fortunately, Jonathan was there. We had planned to do core exercises after the run. I had pretty much convinced myself that I wasn't up for that routine. However, I knew I wanted to go through them again so I can get the routine down better. Jonathan took me through the cycle. My core strength is absolutely pathetic. There's just about nothing there. I really need to work on this. It's so bad it's embarrassing. Anyway, Jonathan was patient and we finished them off.

Should note that I saw Stephanie on the trail. She did at least 3 loops while I was there. I think she may have been with some of the Tornados running club since I saw some of their members too.

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