In Utah on the Provo River Trail with Sasha and others. This is not the workout I would have done if I had been on my own today. I guess I would call this a tempo run. Average pace: 8:14.
I neglected to turn my Garmin on until we actually started running and it took a quarter of a mile to find satellites, so my mile splits were offset from where they should have been. I don't have the pace for the first 1/4 of a mile accounted for in my average, but it was close to the average, so no big deal.
Sasha wanted to see what I could do, so we started out around 8:15. He and the others were kind enough to stay with me for the whole 8 miles (so I wouldn't get lost) and push me to a faster pace than I'm used to, but I was able to be conversational until the very end when Sasha had me run faster for a half mile. Some of them went out for more miles after I was done.
Splits were 8:20, 7:54, 8:03, 8:24, 8:19, 8:25, 8:51, 8:39 (this wasn't a whole mile), a half mile at 6:40, with the last 100 yards all out. (My splits are slightly different from what anyone else who was running would have gotten because of the .25 offset on my laps.)
I got some good advice from Sasha about training pace. I think maybe my biggest weakness right now is the confidence to run faster than I have been. A lesson I learned at the race on Saturday is that I need to have the confidence to line up closer to the front. It took me 2 1/2 minutes to get to the start line on Saturday. And now today I heard from Sasha that he thinks I can run a marathon faster than I thought that I could. | 