Progression run. 15 miles with last 30 minutes moderate, uphill if possible. Yeah, it's possible. Average pace: 9:05.
Weather: 62°F, 65% humidity, wind 20 S. It was very windy and somehow felt like I was running into the wind the whole time. I actually was running either east or west most of the time, so it was a cross wind, and then I had some lovely south straight into the wind at the end. More about that later.
I was late getting out for my run this morning. I had all these good intentions to get up and do it early in the morning. Oh well. I finally got out the door for my run about 8:20. I ran my basic to work and home loop with some variation to make it longer. I went two major roads further before the turn than I normally do, so I was running in an area that I'd never run in before. Part of that section was on a busy highway with no sidewalk and a narrow shoulder, but that was only for a half mile.
I started out with heavy legs and not feeling great, but I decided to keep going and see if I felt better. I got feeling better after a couple of miles and felt decent until about the start of the 11th mile. Around the 3rd or 4th mile a song came on that was a little too fast for me to match my cadence to the beat. The song was in 4/4 time, but I managed to take 3 steps for each measure in the song, so I did 3 against 4 and alternated the foot that was hitting the ground on the downbeat.
When I have a workout like this where the total is a distance and then I'm supposed to do the last part faster for a certain length of time, I have to guess how fast I'll go on the fast part in order to figure out when to start it so that I'll end with the correct total distance. I decided to start the faster part today after 11.5 miles. I was going to start after 11.25 miles, but I decided that I wasn't feel that great and would run a bit slower, so I changed it.
The uphill moderate part was tough, but I probably kept it at a moderate effort for the first 20 minutes or so. Then I hit the hill that I do hill repeats (not hill sprints) on occasionally. It's probably about a 6-8% grade and it probably took me 3 minutes to get up it. I was struggling by the time I got to the top of the hill, but then things levelled off and there was even a little downhill until the last 2 minutes of my 30 minutes. I was going due south straight into the wind up a hill with about a 4-5% grade. I know I was supposed to be going based on effort, not a specific pace, but I was so close to the end, I just wanted to keep the same pace I had been doing (around 8:30) to the end. I really had to push hard to finish. It was one of those gut-wrenching, vomit inducing efforts (though I did not throw up.) When I finally got to the end of the 30 minutes, I was still about a half mile from home. Usually when I finish a workout and am not back home, I just run easy the rest of the way to make it home. Not today. I stopped my watch and walked home at about 20:00 pace. It was just a really tough run today. I wouldn't have said that if I had stopped after the first 10 miles, but the uphill was a killer. Here are my splits: 9:54, 9:46, 9:18, 8:54, 9:04, 9:03, 9:18, 9:08, 8:56, 9:28, 9:24, 9:33 (this was 0.5 miles), then for the 3.57 miles of "moderate" effort, the average pace was 8:24.
I'm late posting because I had to do a bunch of stuff and got really busy after my run.
Congratulations to everyone who raced today! | 