Tempo Thursday

This weekend I am "racing" a half with the goal of being somewhere between my half marathon PR and marathon PR pace, and hoping to tack on another 3 hard to get in a 16 mile simulator before Philly. With that on tap I didn't want to do too much damage on today's tempo run. But seeing as time is limited I didn't want to blow off a key quality workout either. I decided I would target a 5 mile even effort tempo with the goal of around 6:30 pace, trying to keep it between 6:20 and 6:40 depending on how I felt. This was the first workout in awhile I felt a bit run down going into it, but surprisingly the first mile felt pretty smooth, but probably went a hair too aggressively as the next two miles were a little slower. Managed to get it back on track the last two miles, and happy to have averaged 6:19 for 5 miles without having to dig too deep to do it. I had a good tune running through my head (random side note I had to laugh at one of Dooce's recent posts where she "blames" Rhianna for injuring her ankle) and although I was again a bit "spacy" today I managed to focus in on the run and lock it in whenever I started slacking off or daydreaming.

06:15.0

06:24.5

06:23.4

06:16.2

06:16.3

I will say I think I prefer the progression tempo to the even effort tempo these days. It's sooo much more fun to hammer the last few miles. But I am sure it is good for me to mix in both types of efforts!