Wednesday, October 2, 2013

When does it get easy again?

We promised to take Greg to Industrial today, and we kept our word. Rand, Roy, Scott, Greg, and I headed south down Washington, a break from the ordinary, and headed to Hillcrest via Industrial. The target was 6 miles, first 3 easy, second 3 hard. Greg wanted sub-7 minute pace for the second half.

I didn't know if that was possible. I still feel pretty busted up after the weekend. I hoped after a warm-up I would loosen up. It worked, sorta, last night. The first part of the ride wasn't very easy for me, but it got better as it went on. Maybe lightning would strike twice.

We got down to the circle, which we did twice, and on the second loop we were off. I have no sense of pace at the moment, and since I'm so sore, I just knew I had to run hard. I took off and immediately separated from Greg.

This was not intentional or even desirable. I tried to use the Garmin to regulate my pace, but the instant pace feature doesn't really work for nearly a half mile after you take off. I couldn't trust the reading from the start, and anyway, they were jumping all over the place in a crazy fashion. I decided to just run hard and let it sort out.

The first mile rolled by and the Garmin said 6:13. Whether that was the pace at that moment or for the mile I cannot say. I just kept going. It was all over the place the second mile too, and I thought I saw something like 6:34. That was more like it. This mile was up Industrial, so I was very happy about that one. Finally, the last mile said 6:43 I think, which kept me around the 6:30 mark on average.

This was not easy, but it was not all-out. I felt confident it was a solid run, so it was with a great deal of surprise when I got home and uploaded the data. Man, the device isn't all that accurate, or at least it wasn't tonight. In that last three miles it had me at paces as slow as 12:11-minute mile. That. Didn't. Happen. The run was unbroken by any traffic or obstruction.

Anyway, assuming the run was a bit longer than it reported (considering two laps around the circle), and the crazy spikes notwithstanding, the final 5k time was 21:05 - way faster than the 7-minute pace Greg wanted, but slower than it felt like. What I'm going to have to do is run on the tempo course and see how it measures up to that. Then I'll know. 

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