Archive for March 27th, 2009

As per our usual catch up, Wednesday was an easy 11@8:29 and yesterday was an easy 7@8:32.  On the latter run I wore my HR monitor, which I rarely do for easys, but I wanted to see where I stood lately after all this racing.   It ended up giving me some very positive feedback so I was excited to use it for today’s tempo.

Since the run today was focused on goal Half pace and with 6 weeks to go, I’m still mulling it over, I’ve been thinking about 7:25/mi. which would get me a 1:37:04.  But then, how can you look at that and not think, “so close to 1:36″ so I finally aimed for 7:23s today, figuring that if the HR monitor told me “too much, back off”, I’d obey without a fight.

It was a lovely day out, 61 degrees, which I thought might work against me since I’ve been running in cooler weather and anything above 55 makes me nervous, but it ended up being juuust right.  My splits were 7:24, 7:23, 7:21, 7:21, 7:24 for an average pace of 7:22.  The best part is my Heart Rate averaged 172 (83% HRR) – well situated for a Half.

As comparison, my last tempo on March 6th (haven’t done them recently due to racing) on a similar 55 degree day was 6 miles @ 7:35, so here’s how the first 5 tempo miles of that run compares to today’s 5 miles.

March 6,   7:35/mi, avg. HR 176 (86% HRR, Max 89%)
March 27, 7:22/mi, avg. HR 172 (83% HRR, Max 86%)

I do believe that 1:36:30 is now a reasonable goal for May 3rd.  Woohoo!

Funny thing, I was looking at my receipt for the Half yesterday which I paid for back in October (a couple weeks before I’d even run Steamtown) and you had to fill in a projected finish time.  I had written 1:43 – and that was me being optimistic.

This is an entertaining time, is all I can say.