Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Other Weekend Runs

After waiting around for 45 not-stretching-minutes because I was too busy practicing my AG acceptance speech, I headed out for the remaining 6M on Saturday. I had no ‘official’ time goal for this run, I just wanted to keep everything in the 7:10 to 7:30 range. The first mile was brutal, as my body was utterly unwilling to regroup for another run. I was paying for cooling down. After a 7:20 first mile, I decided to turn it up to close to 7:10, and my last five miles went like this 6:54, 6:55, 6:54, 6:50, 6:37. Apparently there was still a little left in the tank. Average pace was 6:55/M.

Sunday I decided to run with the Cows and do my 12M in the fields and among the hills (well, as much ‘hills’ as we get around here). Instead of even pretending to try to run my long run pace of 8:05 to 8:30, I thought it would be fun to turn this into a ‘keep it around 7:00 per mile’ run. Given the elevation change in this route, this should make for a solid challenge.

The miles clicked by and I felt good, fighting each hill and trying to keep the momentum as I crested. My splits went: 6:47, 6:52, 7:00, 7:01, 7:00, 7:07 (Gu/H2O), 7:04, 6:50, 7:03, 6:54 (Gu/H2O), 6:51, 6:36. Yeah, that is a negative split second half by 44 seconds. Average pace was 6:55/M; equivalent to my pace run range (6:50/M to 7:10/M).

And with that I said goodbye to easy Week 9. Now I begin the difficult part of my Bayshore training—starting with 5 repeat miles tonight.

4 comments:

Sun Runner said...

Sunday I decided to run with the Cows

It's only natural. After all, you did attend Moo U. ;)

Nitmos said...

Congratulations on a great job in the Grudge 5k! You are off to a GREAT start this year.

The plan must be to BQ at Bayshore then?! Because you sure are on pace to do so. It's a nice course to get that done as well.

Irish Cream said...

I'm pretty sure there would be no moving my arse again after cooling down from a 5K . . . I am so impressed that you got going again!

And 12 miles of hills? That's totally badass! Great job!

The Laminator said...

Great pacing on both of your runs. I'm sure you, like me, find it much harder to slow down the pace rather than speed it up. Bayshore is looking pretty good so far! Great job!