As for today, I did a radio spot in the morning, got home and stuffed a meatloaf sandwich down my gullet, waited forever for it to digest, then went out for my first tempo run in months.

One of the best things about 5K training is iddy biddy tempo runs.  Seriously, the optimum LT time for this distance is good ole 20-30 minutes.  What a novelty!  In fact, looking at my logs, the last time I did a 3-mile tempo run was Nov. 14, 2007.  It’s almost enough to make a gal feel guilty…almost.  Total workout was 7 miles with 3 tempo, the tempo splits were 7:56 (windy start), 7:52, 7:43 for an avg of 7:50.

I should also mention that I’m using the park markings instead of the Garmin for quality workouts from this point on.  It’s the only smart thing to do because today, for example, the Garmin autolaps consistently came up 4-6 seconds short every mile!  Sheesh.  It’s not always that bad – Sunday was spot on with the markers, but I clearly can’t depend on it. Thus, I won’t be doing my beloved 600s for a while, instead I’ll be doing speed workouts to 1/4 and 1/2 miles – but it’s worth it for accuracy’s sake.

In 5K news, my latest happy development was finding another 5K three weeks after the Turkey Trot, which means I now have 6 weeks to do some damage instead of 3.  “Huh?  What’s that you say?  December…cold?  I can’t hear you, fingers in ears la la la la la.”  I’m living in denial but that’s alright, I figure it’s about time I do some uncomfortable races.

As for training, after all my hemming and hawing about different 5K plans, just when you thought I was going to pfollow Pfitz (sorry, I can’t help myselpf), I made an executive decision to return to the same plan I used last Spring: The Flo Plan (a.k.a. The PFlo Plan).  The Flo Plan consists of 45+ mpw, one tempo, one speed plus the requisite long and easys.  Nothing mysterious (bread and butter as far as plans go) but highly effective and I get to do whatever fun speedwork I choose.  Lovely.

So once again, at least for a while, I’m the Boss of Me.  I hope I like it, though I warn me, I tend to disrepect authority – plus I can tell I’m going to be a bitchy boss already.  Gotta go now, I have to tell me that I’m about to be laid off.  Who hired this whack job, anyway?

As mentioned before, I have a 5k in 4 weeks, my first 5K since last April.  In order to do the best I can for it, I have to change my modus operandi.  The multi-hour runs of marathon training don’t fit in a 5K plan, and even my medium long runs are too long for optimizing this distance.  Last night, I compared Pfitz, Glover & Higdon 5K advanced plans (the last 4 weeks, since that’s where I’m jumping in) and while Pfitz allows a 10-miler this week, the highest he goes for the next three weeks is 9 miles.  Higdon builds to a high of a 90-minute run the week before the race, while Glover would have me do 8, tops.  Wow.

It’s a weird feeling.  When you’re on a steady diet of one long and one medium long, every week for half a year, it becomes the “way you run” and part of how you identify yourself.  You become a marathoner.  How strange now, to let that go. Kind of sad, actually.

What’s even weirder is that I just looked back at my logs and realized I’ve been running long runs (and mediums, as Pfitz would define) since all the way back to June 2007, when I began training for my first Half.  No wonder I’m feeling off-kilter about shelving them, even if it is for a mere 4 weeks.

The Pfitz 5K schedule is a nice frame, skeletal really (he gives you the quality work for the week and you figure out the rest), but I’ve been having tempo run urges lately (yeah, I can’t believe it either) and Pfitz doesn’t include any in the last 4 weeks of his plan.  He does, however, call for a 2-mile race in a couple weeks (oh yeah, there’s always a 2-mile race going on somewhere!) but even if I was to do a 2-mile time trial, that just sounds like a painfully unfun run to me, so I’ll be replacing it with a 4-mile tempo run.

As for weekly mileage, I’m not willing to see it shrink much, even if I am having a temporary 5K flirtation.   To make it work with the shorter runs, I’ll be going back to 6-day running weeks, same as I was doing before marathon training.

So blindly I tread into this new phase, trying not to mourn the loss of long runs or worrying that my endurance is about to die a nasty death.  Instead, I must Trust.  Trust that my inner speed demon will rise to the surface this month and reward me with a shiny new PR for my trouble.