Crappy, Crappy Long Run

I was really due for a crappy run, and I had it on Monday. I mentioned that my intervals over a week ago felt sluggish and that I had a "training readiness" of 3. And I mentioned in my recent "week in review" post that I've been dragging and need to ease back a little.

I started my run and upped the pace (for 6 miles) as I usually do after 2.5 miles of warming up. But I just couldn't get the times to drop, even though I was working. My first 3 half-mile splits were over 3:10, which is very unusual lately. I just couldn't get my times down. After 3 miles, I knew I wasn't going to get to mile 6, so I decided to only go 5 (and my last 2 miles were a bit faster because I was happy I was skipping a 6th harder mile). So the half-mile splits of the harder 5 miles in the middle of this long run looked like this:

3:18, 3:12, 3:14, 3:09, 3:07, 3:08, 3:05, 3:02, 3:03, 3:04 = 31:27 for 5 miles (6:17.40 pace).

6:23.67 pace for the first 3, and 6:08.00 pace for the last 2.

6:58 overall pace, 6:17 pace for 5 faster miles

If I go back to mid-March, here's what each of my weekly long runs looked like:

- 3/17: 6:48 overall pace, 5:59 pace for 6 faster miles
- 3/24: 6:54 overall pace, 6:13 pace for 6 faster miles
- 3/31: 6:37 overall pace, 5:59 pace for 6 faster miles (treadmill)
- 4/07: 6:56 overall pace, 6:12 pace for 6 faster miles
- 4/14: 6:49 ovearll pace, 6:08 pace for 6 faster miles
- 4/21: 6:58 overall pace, 6:10 pace for 5.3 faster miles (before a race)
- 4/28: skipped because of the Get in Gear 10K
- 5/05: 6:48 overall pace, 6:04 pace for 6 faster miles

So of those 7 previous weekly runs, 2 had pace miles that were barely sub-6:00, 2 had pace miles at 6:0X, and 3 were in the lower 6:1Xs. This week's run was in the upper 6:1Xs... not a huge difference, but it felt SOOOOO crappy.

The next morning, I woke up with another low "training readiness" score telling me to rest:

I went for a slightly easier swim workout, and I was able to get my "training readiness" to slowly rise throughout the week! I'm thinking next week will have some more rest days!