9 Mile Tempo at McAlpine

Goal:
9 mile progression tempo starting at 630 and getting faster

Actual:
2 miles warmup
9 mile tempo in 54:45 with splits of 6:20, 6:17, 6:13, 6:11, 5:55, 5:58, 6:02, 5:58, 5:48
2 miles cool down

I've woken up early every single day for the past three weeks, and this morning was no different.  In fact, I've gotten on this new kick where I want to wake up every day at 5:20am and be out the door by 5:45 for whatever run I've got on tap.  This means that I should be getting to bed earlier, but my boyfriend is just too endearing for me to pass up a conversation with after his baseball games.  Even with a later bedtime, I've been getting 7-8 hours of sleep regularly and sleeping like a baby for every single second of those hours.  This morning, I woke up to the sound of my alarm and put my running clothes on in the dark and performed my normal morning rituals before heading out to the Old Bell entrance of McAlpine.

I had a nice crew of company this morning for the tempo:  Adrian Stewart, Jason Martin, Aaron Linz, and Billy Shue.  We only did a two mile warmup with a bigger group that was doing an easy run and started from the Old Bell mark, ran to the 4 mile mark, turned around, jumped on the last mile of the course, and headed back to where we started from.

The whole crew of us worked together through 3 miles before Aaron split off to catch us on the back end and Billy and I continued to pick up the pace so eventually AJ and Jason slowly slipped behind us, but not by much!  Billy and I ran side by side for miles 3-6 and it was fun to work together with him as we both maintained a solid pace.  Since I am Billy's coach, I was paying attention to his breathing because he's been ordered to take a down week to give his body a rest from all the racing he's been doing.  I could tell that he was fine, but didn't want him to over do it so I determined he would only do 6 miles.

On my end, everything felt fantastic except for my legs.  They just felt heavier than usual. All other components felt absolutely fantastic though! My form, my breathing, and my confidence were all right there and I knew that I could power through the tempo with some solid times with my tired legs.

After 6 miles, Billy stopped as I had instructed him to do so, and Aaron picked me up to join me for the last third of the work out.  Aaron had all sorts of energy and although my breathing wasn't very labored, I wasn't ready to expend my energy talking.  We exchanged some words and his energy helped motivate me.  I really wanted to run sub-6 in those final three miles so I utilized Jordan Kinley's tactics by telling myself that I only had 18 minutes left of running and kept counting down.  Before I knew it, the mile marker was suddenly there and I told Aaron "UNA MAS" and we powered it in.  I closed in a 5:48 which is really great considering it's mid-summer.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this workout because I was able to progressively get faster on a pair of tired legs.  I love how even though everyone had varying types of a tempo today we were able to make it work so that we would be able to help push each other at varying points of the work out.  I love running tempos with other people because it makes the time go by faster and it's always fun to hear how everyone else did.  Jason and AJ had a really solid 6 mile tempo and Aaron helped me out for my latter part.  I could get used to him just running for fun because I keep getting him all to myself in workouts.  It's definitely very nice of him to keep my company.

I'm hoping that I can keep this momentum moving forward until August, when I'm racing the 13.1 Minneapolis with Meagan Nedlo.   The key through this month of July is to maintain my mileage in the upper-70s and to listen to my body as the weather begins to get hotter and more humid.

Fortunately, I get to spend the weekend in Asheville with my parents this weekend.  The following weekend I'll escape some of the NC heat and head to upstate New York to see Garrett for the last time this summer.  Just a short week later, I'll head to California to visit my sister. Obviously July is a month filled with travel for me, but it will be well worth it as I'm spending it with my favorite boy and my family! I am looking forward to running in new places!