Yesterday I couldn't find my watch, so I ran without it. David ran with me and I was happy to not run alone, as I had been for a while. He has a GPS watch so I figured that would be good enough for me.
going into the run i wasn't totally sure how i would respond to the demands of 8 miles, with 5+ of them at a hard effort. (Still not feeling 100% and sleep interuptions).
I had the route all picked out. Going to get some hills in as we ran through Starmount, and would head towards the bridge which would lead us to the park and Huntingtown Farms where we would pick up that common route which is full of hills too. Purposefully, we took the first mile easy and clicked a 7.54 and I noticed my legs were feeling actually better than the day before.
From mile one, we started grooving into low 7 pace and kept it conversational. We actually clicked off a 6.48. Okay, a little quicker for mile 2 than desired, but nothing to do but keep the momentum going. Mile 3 we started to talk less and run faster aided by a lot of downhills. 6.22. Hmmm, quicker than planned - but not feeling too bad...yet.
The forth mile I seperated from David as I was trying to hold the 6.20 pace, and I probably slowed a little bit. Approximiatly 6.30 for mile 4, and now I was just trying to fight and hold and not slow up, despite my plans of progressing faster each mile.
As I hit the hills I was feeling strong, just not quite as fast as I wanted. I was happy with my effort, but was considering ending the push a little early once I got to the top of the hills and onto Old Reid. But once I came to the top, I made up my mind to keep the push going because I had a nice straight away I could work on my turn over, and then it was just one more big down and up, that I could end with.
As I slowed for the rest, David came up and told me we were 6.5 miles into the run. Okay, mission accomplished. Just a nice mile and a half cool down together and we were finished.
We talked about how the run was tough, and that perhaps we were a bit too quick early on...and how downhills can actually zap your strength if you are not careful.
I loved the workout though. I know that route so well, and it was actually fun to run it (the H-Town hills part) back to back days.
Link from David's watch. I was 1 minute in front at the end of 6.5, before we cooled down 1.5.
total miles for day: 8
No comments:
Post a Comment