Archive for December 2nd, 2008

…or can’t, you’re right.
-Henry Ford

Today was tempo day and I’d been worrying about it since last night, wondering what pace to shoot for. Now that my 5K time is faster than I thought, my quality workout paces need to reflect that, but on the other hand, I don’t want them to be too uncomfortable, they shouldn’t be or I’m not doing them right.

So I figured I’d play it by ear today, really try to lock into effort instead of numbers. My main thing was I didn’t want to berate myself if I didn’t go as fast as McMillan’s fast end of the range.

Turns out, the run felt so good that I ended up as surprised as I was at Saturday’s race, with my fastest tempo run ever, 4 miles @ 7:29 avg. (7:35, 7:23, 7:29, 7:30).   Then I ran 3 more miles to get home at 8:35/mi.  Total distance: 8.75 w/ 4 tempo.

If you’d have told me last week that I would run these paces today and it wouldn’t wipe me out, I wouldn’t have believed you.  It’s as if the race gave me permission to go faster. Which reminds of what a couple of those fab gals in my Women’s BQ thread say on occasion, “Don’t be afraid to be fast”.  I think there may be something to that.