60 Minute Tempo

Goal:

60 minute tempo at sub-6:30 pace

Actual:

2.5 miles warmup

60 minute tempo at 6:16 pace for 9.56 miles

.33 mile cool down

After getting sick and bombing two workouts, I decided that in order to walk away from this workout with a positive feeling, I needed to reassess my goals.  Do I think that I'm in bad shape?  No.  Do I think that my body is still recovering from whatever sickness I had two weeks ago? You betcha.  In order for me to maintain a sliver of confidence, I decided to lower my expectations for this workout so that I would practically be guaranteed to achieve my goal time.  I decided to pick a goal pace of 6:30 for this 60 minute tempo so that I would have less pressure going into it.

Before I began my warmup, I braided my hair into pigtails in memory of Sally.  It took me 30 minutes just to braid my hair, and I was all the more amazed with Sally's skill of making two perfect braids in her hair!  My braids were no where close to perfection, but I did feel like she was there with me, spreading positive energy around my being. 

With my two braids whipping from side to side, I took off from my house, in the direction of Freedom Park to meet Will.  We started in the middle of Freedom Park and ran to the end of the Greenway, rounded back through Freedom Park and then ran the Booty Loop 1.5 times.  I didn't look at my watch for the first four miles, because I really wanted to start the tempo truly on feel and not worry about whatever pace I was hitting.  

After we crested the first big hill in the Booty Loop, I really began to feel pretty strong and I maintained a pace between 6:19 and 6:14 for the final 4 miles.  In the last .56 mile, I ran an average of 5:51 pace.  I am really proud of myself for finishing so strong, especially after a workout that I really lacked a lot of confidence going into.  While this tempo pace is much slower than what I was running in the fall of 2010, I know that there have been some small hurdles I have had to deal with.  With a couple more weeks at 75-80 miles, I think that my legs will finally be coming back under me!  

What I learned most from this workout is that it's much easier to walk away from a workout in a positive mindset if you make goals that are realistic for where you are at that given moment in time, taking into consideration sickness, weather, terrain and other factors that could affect performance.

As a side note, I spent this evening watching the NCAA DI Women's DMR online.  I was so amazed and awed by the performance of both Sheila Reid and Jordan Hasay.  The competitiveness that they both exhibited was something that I would love to be able to execute upon in my own races.  When Sheila made a move with 1 lap to go, Jordan went to a different gear to try to pass her back, but Sheila noticed the move and reacted with another gear too!  It was an amazing race and I was inspired to finish with such fierceness.