Maria's Running Blog

I felt much better today than last Sunday after segments run on Saturday. The weather was beautiful low 60s with light breeze and I enjoyed cruising through the park comfortably.

Total time: 53:35 (8:47 pace).

I felt lazy today and thought about just running easy as I was walking out the door. But then I thought that I have 10K race in 2 weeks, and I don't want to completely embarass myself as it will be my first race trying to score for my new club. So I decided to stick to the plan and do Tinman Tempo run.

Warmed up 1.7mi and started on the tempo. Garmin said I was running 7:50 pace, and I backed off a bit to stay closer to 8:00, but for some reason, my pace kept slipping more and more. Garmin was showing 8:15, and it didn't feel easy! A flood of negative thoughts went through my head - "what's going on?", "why does 8:10 pace feel so hard?", "I must have lost a lot of fitness", "I must have gained weight", and on, and on. I kept pushing the pace though, and finally, after about a mile, I managed to get the pace down to 8:00. From there on, I started feeling decent and got into a good rhythm. By the end of the tempo, I dropped the pace to 7:54 average (39:28 for 5 miles). Ran out of road on my loop and had to finish on the track, which was handy as I needed to do strides after anyway. Did 3x100m strides and jogged home. Finished in the dark, about 9:30PM. Still don't know what happened on that first mile of tempo, maybe Garmin was lagging.

Total time 1:06:53 for 8 miles (8:21 pace avg.), not counting strides.

Legs felt stiff, tight and tired. It's no surprise, really, seeing that it's my 5th day of running in a row at a higher mileage than I was doing since the marathon. I have to go through this re-training curve until I'm comfortable at 45-50 mi/week again.

Based on how my legs felt, I expected a slow trudge, but was surprised to see decent pace. Breathing was fine, but overall not a fun run.

Total time: 53:32 (8:46 pace).

Did warmup to the track, then 4x200m strides at ~6:40 pace, then CV repeats 4x1000m with 1 min. jog recovery between. This time Garmin was working perfectly, and I switched it to metric units so I could measure exactly where 1000m ends. Turns out last week I did run a bit too short, but only by 10-15 m, no more. The goal was 4:36, and my splits were 4:32, 4:31, 4:32, 4:32. I felt pretty good - it was pretty hard effort, but I could maintain it without going overboard.

Afterwards, did 4x100m strides at ~6:20-6:30 pace and jogged home.

I was debating whether to do long run today, or tomorrow since I did CV reps yesterday, and doing segments run today seemed a bit too much. Then I checked the weather forecast and it called for rain starting later today and going ALL day tomorrow. Hmm, I really didn't feel like running in the rain for 2 hours, so I decided to go today but do an easy long run with faster finish if I felt good, rather than segments run.

Feeling good about my compromise, I headed out the door... only to feel the drizzle as soon as I stepped outside! It has been solid overcast all morning, but of course it had to start raining just as I got out. Oh well, I was committed already and it didn't feel too bad. It was actually perfect weather for running - mid 50s, no wind and light drizzle.

Garmin was completely out of it, and understandably so - the skies were grey and visibility was low. It never caught the signal at all, so I had to run only by feel. I was just running easy pace, doing loops around Regents Park. I did 3, and felt decent, so I hit the split and sped up for the 4th loop. I know that one loop is 2.75 miles, and I was wondering what pace I was running. Couldn't tell for sure, but it felt like marathon pace. When I finished, the watch said 22:15. By that time, the rain was coming down steady, no longer a drizzle. I was totally soaked. I spent my 10+ minutes of cooldown trying to calculate the pace on that last loop, but being pretty tired at that point, my math skills were not the greatest (not that they ever are!), so I just concluded I did around 8 min. pace. Now I know it was 8:05 pace - right at my marathon pace. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this run - I'm done with my long run for the week, and I felt very decent for 13+ miles.

Total time: 1:56:25 (8:41 pace).