Tempo

I attempted my first ever tempo run today. I say "attempted" because it was pretty awful. Not in terms of effort, mind you, I was out there working my butt off. But more awful in the way of ability.

Wednesdays are my sorta-long days. The first week of training they start out at 5 miles and work up to 10 over the course of 18 weeks. Ten miles in the middle of the week is a big deal for me. Ten miles was my long run during my training for the half so to now be doing that on a Wednesday seems pretty ominous. But I am stepping up to the challenge. Oh yes, bring it on Wednesday Ten Miler.

I'm veering off course. Back to the tempo run. I decided that I want to incorporate some speed work into my training this summer. It's by no means mandatory and I've promised myself that if I ever feel like I'm getting overwhelmed or feel like I can't recover, I won't have any qualms about nixing the speed work. However, I'm feeling pretty good and I want to see what will happen if I try this. Plus, it spices up and otherwise typical 5 miles in the park after work.

I've decided to do my tempo runs every other Wednesday (on my sorta-long day) so I can have an adequate warm up, run for a few miles at tempo pace, then plenty of cool down which will total my scheduled miles for the day. So today, 1 mile warm up, 3 miles at tempo pace, and 1 mile cool down. I have to say that it 5 miles went by in the blink of a second but it was also much harder than I'd anticipated. Also, I think I started out way too fast. Here are the splits:

warm up mile: 11:00

mile 1: 9:23
mile 2: 10:47
mile 3: 9:32

cool down mile: 11:30

Not very good. I was all over the place. I had intended to run 3 steady 10:00 miles and look what I did! I went out way too fast and crashed at the second mile!! I had sort of an emtional breakdown at the second mile which was odd because I usually let go of whatever emotional baggage I'm carrying around while I run. (There's a pun in there somewhere, isn't there? Like my emotional baggage is too heavy to carry with me while I run so I leave it in the car? Bad, I know.) The last mile wasn't too bad but it was still about 30 seconds too fast. Geesh. I need help! I've read up on how to do this tempo thing but it's a lot harder to do than read! I reckon I'll be sore tomorrow.