A Rare Tempo Run

This winter had many consistent long treadmill runs with “race pace” miles in the middle. But RARELY any faster tempo runs. I realized that in late February as I was heading into 2 races in March. I’d done a few speed workouts, but they were intervals (nothing “sustained” like a tempo workout). So I decided to do a tempo run a week ago, as it was 1.5 weeks after my last race and it was safe to push it again.

I ran a total of 6 miles from the college where I teach, and did the middle 3 miles HARD. I ran a loop around Como Lake with a bit more through Como Park (the end of mile 2 was heading up the hill around the waterfall by the Como Pavillon, and then up and around Como Conservatory, so that's the main reason why mile 2 was my slowest). My HARD mile splits looked like this:

5:54.90 + 6:02.22 + 5:48.77 = 17:45 (5:55 / mile pace).

Miles 1-4 done hard. The slow spots around mile 2.8 are going up some hills.

I had a tiny rock in my shoe during my warm up, and then I forgot about it. I think it lodged at the tip of my big toe, because as I walked around later in the day, I felt pain there. Then I realized I had a little blood blister:

I had to look back at recent races - I figured this could have been the fastest I’ve ran in a while. But it ended up being not THAT fast. Over my last 9 races that I looked at, I had a faster 3-mile stretch in 1 of them (3 races ago at the end of O’Gara’s 8K [5:58, 5:48, 5:51 = 17:37], but also it's worth noting that 4 races ago at my Indoor Triathlon, my 3 miles of the 5K were the same as this tempo workout [5:54, 5:58, 5:51 = 17:45]). And I only looked 9 races back because my 10th race back was a 1 mile road race.