16 Mile Long Run w/ Tempo

Goal:
5k Race Rumba on the Lumber

Actual:
No race
16 miles with 4 miles at 607 pace

So as of last night, I was supposed to do the Rumba on the Lumber 5k in Lumberton, NC.  In fact, we were even going to get a hotel for Friday night and stay over so that we could sleep in.  Well, by Thursday night, I had already nixed the idea of getting a hotel room because it was too much for my taste.  Then, by Friday night, I had nixed the idea of going to the race altogether because of two main things:  (1) the prize money was not $500 for the win as I thought and was instead $250 and (2) because of the reduced prize money, the cost / benefit analysis came out negative, when factoring in time lost to drive there.  So, we scrapped the plan to go to the race, and instead I made plans with Matt to run with a group at McMullen.

Now back to this morning, it was 8AM and I still had two hours before our run with Caleb and Danielle. I looked out the window, and it was snowing. No big deal.  An hour later, the snow flakes had tripled in size and were coming down in larger numbers.  I made a point on our Facebook thread that the wooden pathways at McMullen would be very slick for a tempo, and Caleb immediately made fun of me for being a weakling.  Once we got to McMullen though, Caleb realized that I had been right and we had to make a change to the tempo course to avoid the slick boards.

Going easy on the boards was just fine, just a little slick, but no big deal.  However, when picking up the pace, it definitely would have been difficult, so instead we did two loops around the church for a total of four miles before Caleb kept going straight on Pineville Matthews.  We hit splits of 6:15, 5:58, 6:15, 5:58 for each uphill/downhill mile. After the long run was over, I realized that we had averaged 7:05 pace for the easy portion of the run, which was definitely satisfying to see as that did not feel hard at all.  Unconsciously, I was pushing the pace so that I could warm my legs up which seemed to be absolutely freezing the entire time the snow was falling.

Although I scrapped a race, I was happier with the long run because it will prepare me for a solid half in the summer.