Another Treadmill Tempo Run

Well, I'm back on my late-summer training plan of "every-other-week Friday speed workouts" it would seem. It's unofficial - it just seemed to happen.

Just over 4 weeks ago, I did my first hard running our on new treadmill: it was 5.5 miles total with the middle 3 in 18:04 (starting at 9.5 mph and building to 10.5 mph within those 3 miles).

Just over 2 weeks ago, I took Charlie for some stroller running intervals along the river: 2x2 miles with 3:00 walking rest between in 11:59 and 11:49. I was thrilled with those splits!

And now this past Friday, I hit the treadmill for another tempo run. I started at 10.0 mph (after a 1 mile warm-up) and built to 10.8 mph over those 3 miles: if I recall correctly, I did 10.0 mph for the first mile, and then I bumped it up about every half mile to 10.2, 10.4, 10.6, and then 10.8 for the final half mile.

My watch somehow went missing during our overnight trip to Forestville State Park a few weeks ago, and my Garmin was totally dead as well. So I tried to take my splits on my iPhone, which SUCKED. It took many tries to get the screen to register my sweaty fingers at times. So these might be off by a second or 2, but I ran half mile splits of 2:59, 2:58, 2:59, 2:52, 2:49, and 2:47 for a total of 17:26.22 (5:48.74/mile average). The overall time is correct, but the splits might be long or short within these 3 miles because of my sweaty fingers.

The thing about this workout is (... and some of you might hate me for this...) that it didn't really feel ALL that hard. Yes, I had to catch my breath for a few seconds at the end, but after 2 miles, I was still feeling pretty good. Albeit sweaty. So next time, I'll try starting faster - maybe around 10.4 mph? Or maybe I just was feeling really good for this run and I got lucky.