Descending Tempo Run

I'm feeling OK about my fitness, but not about my "distance speed," and I'm gearing up for the TC 10 Mile in 5 weeks. So on Friday, I looked back to my workouts from Coach Jen when she got me to go sub-60 at the 2010 TC 10 mile to find a proper speed workout - not something too short (like I was doing to get ready for the Raspberry Run 1 Mile last month), but not something too long (like the 2x2 mile intervals that Jen gave me in prep for the 10 mile all those years ago). I found a hill-related workout that scared me now because of some foot pain, and I found a fartlek workout but was similar to some speed work within a long run recently.

I found a workout from Jen that was 6 miles total: 1 mile of warm-up, 1 mile "building" and harder but with still some room left to speed up, and then 3 more miles faster and faster and faster until completely maxxed out. (So that's 4 miles faster, with really the last 3 being the hardest ones.) And then a mile of cool down.

My warm-up mile was quite slow, and I cranked it up to start my "building" mile. I wasn't really happy with my "harder" 1/2 mile splits of 3:18 and 3:14, but I was ready to pick it up more for the next mile.

I *was* happy about my next split, as it was 2:58! And then I ended that mile with a 3:10 half-mile split. I was working.

The next mile had 2 splits of 3:01 which was great. But I was HASHED. I was ready to call it quits after another half mile if I needed to, but I wanted to try to get in the final full mile (for 2 reasons: because that was the point of the workout, and because there was a little uphill that would be good for me to run hard).

In that final mile, I was happy to see my first half mile split was 2:54. That sort of gave me a boost to see what I could do in the final half mile (even though I figured it would be slower as there was a nice little hill in it). Sure enough, my final half mile was 2:58, but I felt great about this workout.

My "building" opening mile was green and yellow (splits 2-4), and then it was a lot of red!


Pace chart, with the 4 tempo miles in red.


On the last pace chart and on this HR chart, you can see a burst of speed (and of
heart rate) crossing the bridge around the 17:00 mark. Maxxed out at 193 at the finish.


WU mile, "building" mile in yellow, descending miles in red, then 2:00 of trying not to die. :)


I was a little surprised I hit the descend so nice: 6:32 "building" mile, then 6:08, 6:02, and 5:52.