Friday, December 14, 2007

Not Built for Speed

I'm beginning to dislike Fridays.

Plan today was to run 2 miles at my goal 10k race pace. I did 2x1m last week and it was unpleasant to say the least. The logic is that 55 miles of training later I have hopefully increased my capacity enough to be able to to do those 2 miles without any recovery between them.

I have a street loop that is about 1 mile and has no crossings etc to worry about, it isn't completely flat but close enough. Did a warmup for a mile or so, which was definitely needed given that it was about 30 degrees.

Then it was time to go! First half mile went by in 3:12, so I'm on pace, second half a little slower at 3:17 - 6:29 for the first mile (4 seconds slow, which is almost half a minute in a 10k). Picked it up a step in the 3rd half and did 3:10 and managed to hold it thru the end to finish with a 3:11 - 6:21 second mile. Average for the 2 was 6:25 - so a success, but it wasn't any fun at all. Heartrate max'd at 174, whereas last week doing the 2x1miles I hit 176 in each mile, so I guess that's a good thing.

However, I am really concerned about my ability to run 6.2 miles at that pace in just 17 days. I just don't see how it can happen. Next week I'll do 2x2miles and then the week after try to run 5k (3.1 miles) in 19:55. Those two are probably achievable, but to do 6.2 of these in a row I am going to need some serious race day adrenalin, or a strong tailwind.

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