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Monday, April 5, 2010

Tough as Nails* (Take 2!)

*Wherein this time, the title is in fact referring to me ME and not the workout!  Heck yes.

This morning I had my scariest workout for all of my marathon training:  10 miles with 8 at a tempo pace of 8:44.  If you recall from a couple weeks ago, I totally failed at life for the last tempo run, by not fueling or hydrating properly.  I normally do my speedwork on Tuesdays, but I'm switching around my schedule this week.  Long run is going to be Friday at lunch (I'm off early, whoo!) then off to see the boy.  As I had learned my lesson last time on my 18 miler, thou shall not complete speedwork and long run in close proximity.  Can't get much further away from Friday then Monday, right?

Fuel!  I drug myself out of bed early, ugh,  just to eat, double ugh.  I had a big ol' bowl of cereal with a nanner.  After letting it settle, I headed out for my run.  My warm up mile was a smidge too fast, but no big deal, right?  Once the warm up mile was behind me, I started in on tempo mile #1.  After trucking along at what I "thought" was my tempo pace, I looked down at the Garmin:  8:10.  Uhh...whoops.  For some reason my brain thinks that tempo equates to hard, when 8:44 pace should be just slightly faster than my normal pace that I've been running lately.  That definitely did NOT compute.

Around the 2 mile tempo point, I came up on a couple that were just starting that appeared to be running in the 8:30-8:40 range.  Perfect-o.  You will be my rabbits until my turn around point!  Drat!  Shoe tying.  I almost stop as well, because why give up the perfect pacers right?  The guy told me to go ahead.  I told him we were running almost the same pace, so I'd take my turn pacing for awhile.  Turns out I do better with being chased than I do when chasing.

1. 9:23 (warm up)

2. 8:38
3. 8:29
4. 8:28
5. 8:32

At the turn around, they kept going (come back!  It's your turn now!!) and I decided to really try to find this elusive tempo pace.  I also wished that I had packed a GU, I could've used a little extra somethin' somethin' at this point.

6. 8:39

7. 8:46
8. 8:48
9. 8:10

I knew I wasn't close to my tempo pace on the last mile, but I always give it everything I have at the end of speedwork sessions, just feels good to go fast sometimes, right?  And then I had a lovely cool down mile.  When I got home, I quickly calculated my pace for my 8 tempo miles 8:33, whoohoo!  My HM pace is 8:34....makes me want to run another one, ASAP.  Since I was rushing off to work, I never looked at the final mile time, assuming it was 9:30ish.

When I got to work and uploading my info into my running log on Runnersworld.com, I was shocked to see that my cool down mile was 8:38!  Almost spot ON what my tempo pace was.  Seriously?  Go figure.  So despite the insanely sporadic splits, I ended up with 9 tempo miles (without realizing it) at a 8:34 pace.

Total run:  10 miles in 1:26:36 for a pace of 8:40.

After talking it over with my office husband (yes, we haven't divorced...yet.  Although he have joked about how many more calories we're going to burn by walking SO FAR to visit each other; God we're nerds) this is my first tempo run of MARATHON TRAINING that hasn't been done on a treadmill.  Plus, it'll be awhile before I need to hit that pace, since the marathon is just going to be done at "whatever pace gets me to the finish line without dying."  And that's in no way going to be 8:44 pace. ;)

I found this picture when I was back home yesterday for Easter.  This is during my 8th grade year (my final year running distance, thank God) at the regional track meet (the meet before the state meet).  I'm in the green (of course), and I literally spent the whole season chasing that chick in blue in front of me.  She was a year behind me, and of course competed in the same events as me in the Varsity and Jr. High track meets.  I'm from a small school, so if you were good enough you could run for the Varsity team, which means I got out of a TON of school in the spring, heck ya!  (Check out that forward lean, you can bet we were running into some STRONG wind, all 100 lbs of me. :p)

Anyways, back to the race.  This was the 1600 m. (the mile) and it was my favorite distance.  I loved being able to judge a competitors stride to determine how tired they were, and when to make my move.  That was the only thing I enjoyed about distance running.  :p  I much preferred the sprinting where I could just run all out for 13 or 27 seconds (depending on the race 100 m. vs. 200 m.) and be done.  Call me lazy.  I think I got 4th or 5th in this race (no I didn't beat girl in blue).  I did find my diary when I was at home with some race times listed in it, and at the beginning of this season I was running ~6:30, and my PR was 6:17.  Not sure if that was this race or not.  Ok, memory lane over.  Carry on with your lives.

10 comments:

  1. Way to kick butt on the ten miler! I can't wait to hear about your marathon.

    PS more office husband stories-i love him :)

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  2. Awesome job on that big tempo run! You are so speedy.

    Love the school track pic!

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  3. Way to rock that 10 miler. Yay for spring!

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  4. Way to go on those 10 miles! You rocked the tempo!

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  5. Way to go on your tempo run!!! Love the blast from the past picture :) Have a great week!

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  6. Nice tempo run! I don't know if you traning plan has additional tempo runs on it, but the current body of knowledge in marathon training is pointing more and more to long tempo runs as key workouts. I did 12 and 14 mile runs as part of my training. If you think 6 miles is the devil....

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  7. I love looking back at all my high school sports stuff! I was just showing a co-worker yesterday a picture of me when I played bball in high school. He was like "thats you???" lol

    Great job on the tempo run! Nice work speedy!

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  8. thanks for the trip down ;) 6:17?! Speedy HS Jeri!

    what marathon training plan are you using?! 10 tempo miles? OOF. Big fist pump for that one!! It's SO much harder to "find" your pace on streets vs treadmill, your legs are faster than they realized ;)

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  9. YAY on that tempo run and you said you did that outside?? NICE. It is really really difficult (in my opinion) to transition from inside to outside with very targeted paces to keep. It's easier to just plug in a number and ride it through…so major props on that one. OH and jet blackberry was the bomb! I liked it a lot. I had the vanilla one during my half and loved that too…which is strange because I usually don't like vanilla flavored candies (only ice cream) so the vanilla bean was a nice combo.

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  10. Great job on your tempo run and also your last 8 miler! Whoo!! Please send me your tempo mojo, as I have my first one in a while tomorrow!

    And since you asked, the bf and I live about 400 miles apart. He lives in SoCal and I live in NorCal. You?

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