Tempo Run Take Two
As you may recall, two weeks ago today was a dark, dark day in my short running career. It was the day of my tempo run meltdown. It’s a day that I’d rather forget, except that I think it is more useful remembered—as a learning experience.
In case you forgot, I had 6 miles scheduled that day: 1 mile warm up, 4 mile tempo run @ 8:40/mile, and then a 1 mile cool down. I stopped twice in the last half mile of the tempo run for a total of nearly 2 minutes, and I felt like a complete failure for it. Fast forward two weeks, to a 7 mile run, with a 1 mile warm up, 5 miles @ 8:39/mile, and a 1 mile cool down.
When I went to bed last night, I wasn’t sure if I’d be doing my tempo run this morning. Part of that was probably me wanting to put off the pain that was sure to come for as long as possible, and part of it was pure practicality. That is, in order to put in 7 miles before work, I’d need to be up and running 30-45 minutes earlier than my normal morning run time, so that I still had time to completely cool down, get myself ready, supervise the kids getting ready, and get the kids to school on time. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to do that. Adding to my indecisiveness was the fact that Julie is out of town today and tomorrow, so I could easily do my run late at night, without any complaints. Well, just in case, I set my alarms (yes, alarms) to go off starting at 5:00 AM. As luck would have it, I was able to roll out of bed by 5:10 AM. And since I was up, I figured I might as well get the run over with.
By 5:20 AM I was out the door and running easy on my warm up mile. 10 minutes and 20 seconds later I was back at the house stretching, and a few minutes after that I was off and running the 5 mile tempo run. The first mile felt good, slow even. I should note that I was using the training partner display screen on my Garmin to help keep me around the proper pace. I focused on staying even or just slightly behind my training partner, never faster. This approach seemed to have worked, as I was able to hold my pace pretty comfortably through the first 3 miles. As I started in on mile 4, I was still feeling good, yet a little (very small amount) doubt tried to creep into my head. Fortunately, I was able to quickly vanquish it, replacing it with thoughts like "you're not getting me this time," "this isn't even hard," or "I've done this before, I can do it again," and finally "I did a 10K at a pace almost this fast." Once I finished mile 4 and was still feeling good, I knew mile 5 was in the bag. I cruised on through the end with an average of 8:40/mile for the full 5 miles! I finished up with a 1 mile cool down and a few strides. Success!
I really can't express how good it felt to finish this run, and finish it strong. Of course in typical fashion, I've been over analyzing it, trying to figure out what the difference is between the two runs. Was I better rested? Was it the banana I had before heading out? Was it because I'd mapped out a relatively flat 5 mile route ahead of time, rather than winging it? Could it actually be improved fitness? Perhaps it just wasn't my day two weeks ago? Maybe it's increased confidence as a result of racing the 10K this past weekend? Lastly, could it be as simple as mental toughening, and a fear of failure? My guess is that it's a little bit of all of them. One last note—I didn't run with my Zune—I wanted to be able to focus on maintaining the proper pace, and nothing else.
Here are my splits:
- Warm up mile: 10:20, Avg HR: 137
- Tempo Run
- Mile 1: 8:40, Avg HR: 160
- Mile 2: 8:40, Avg HR: 172
- Mile 3: 8:39, Avg HR: 178
- Mile 4: 8:40, Avg HR: 181
- Mile 5: 8:38, Avg HR: 184
- Cool down mile: 10:29, Avg HR: 171 (mixed in some stride in the last half mile)
One more note regarding my heart rate: In the end, it was higher than ideal, but I still felt good, like the effort was "comfortably hard," not "hard," and isn't the goal of a tempo run to run based on perceived effort? Also, my new max heart rate is 197, as measured towards the end of the 10K.
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Bryan
at
10:45 AM
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Health and Fitness
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