Same Time, Same Channel

I got out a little earlier than I had been thanks to the start of early morning seminary. I got dressed for running, drove my son to seminary, and then came home and ran. I ran my standard 4 mile course. I started slow, then tried to do a little fartlek with 4 relatively short stretches of faster running separated by a significant cooldown of slower running. It's hard for me to do speedwork because almost always start and end my runs at my house and the area where I live is very hilly, not to mention that it's at an altitude of about 5800 ft.

In any case, here are my stats for this morning:

Mile 1 - 10:13

Mile 2 - 9:30

Mile 3 - 9:00

Mile 4 - 9:29

Average pace: 9:33

A slow run this morning. I've been running 4 days/week and the addition of a Tuesday run ups me to 5 days/week, so I took this one easy and focused the whole time on keeping my breathing at a 3/2 rhythmn rather than worrying about my pace. My average pace was 10:11. My splits were 10:22, 10:12, and 9:57.

Yesterday I used the McMillan Running Calculator to figure out what paces I should be training at. I decided to do a tempo run today with 1 mile of warm up and then 3 miles at tempo pace. According to the McMillan Running Calculator, my target pace for an easy run is 10:44 to 11:14, so I tried to do the first mile at that pace. My target pace for a tempo run is 9:18 to 9:42, so I tried to do the 3 tempo miles at that pace. I hit my targets. Here are my split times:

Mile 1 - 11:09

Mile 2 - 9:36

Mile 3 - 9:30

Mile 4 - 9:22

In order to "mix it up" a little, I ran my regular four mile route backwards. That's not to say that I ran backwards, of course. I tried to go slow. I find that I have a hard time keeping my pace steady. I kept having to look at my watch and make adjustments to my pace. Also, it was windy and I often felt like I was running into the wind, especially when I was going up hill.

This doing more distance at a slower speed is going to take a lot more of my time. I'm going to have to figure out how to fit it in my day. I guess I'll have to start running before the kid goes to early morning seminary instead of after I drop him off. I don't think I can run early enough to be done before he needs a ride to seminary. That means I'll have to talk my husband in to getting up and driving him to seminary.

Split times for this run:

Mile 1 - 11:16

Mile 2 - 11:13

Mile 3 - 10:53

Mile 4 - 10:54

Long run at easy pace. Average pace was 10:40. I had to get up early to do this because of other commitments today, but the up side of that was that it was shady for most of the run.

Split times (1 mile each): 10:58, 10:56, 10:40, 10:30, 10:30, 10:35, 11:00, 10:36, 10:23, 10:32

Mile seven was slower because it had a hill that was fairly steep and about a half mile long. I've read that you can substitute a hilly run for a speed workout, but all of my runs are hilly.