GLORIOUS Morning ... Pretty Good Run!!!

What an awesome morning in KC!!!  40 degrees.  Light Southerly breeze.  And lots of a strange warming phenomenon from the sky that I think is known as "sunshine"!  It was a great ending to a pretty crappy week.  I haven't had a day off in about 13 days as I've been preparing morning, noon, and night for some upcoming speaking engagements.  Mix in travel to Chicago, and the acquisition of a stupid head cold along the way, and I was ready for it to end.

So this morning I strapped on the ol' "fast shoes", and went out for an uptempo longish run.  As I mentioned in my last post, my next race is my Spring "A" race at the Garmin Half Marathon in Olathe, KS.  So all of my workouts over the next 5 weeks or so will be 100% geared to running that race at a PR pace.  And this morning was  no exception.

When I started the run, I immediately noticed that my legs were a little dead after a pretty fast "mile repeats" session on Thursday, and a somewhat intense leg strengthening workout on Friday.  Throw into the mix that I really didn't feel like focusing on a long run since I'm on the final stages of been sick, and I wasn't sure I could keep my targeted pace.  The original intent of the workout was two 5 mile blocks at a 6:30 pace, with about 3 minutes rest in between.  I knew that was a little aggressive for where I'm at right now but I thought I'd give it a shot.

After a three mile warm-up, I accelerated into my pace fairly easily.  The biggest thing that I struggled with today was any kind of incline.   The Garmin Half is flat, but I've really got to mix in some hill workouts over the next few weeks.  When running downhill, or on flat terrain, the 6:30'ish pace was pretty easy, and at times I had to force myself to slow down.  I got to mile 2.5 after a long 1 mile climb, which happened to be where my water was waiting for me.  So I stopped for about 90 seconds to grab a drink, and frankly rest a little.  But after that, I immediately got back into the pace.  The next 2.5 miles were mostly downhill and I managed them fairly easily.  But I stopped the clock again at mile 5 for a quick 1 minute regathering of myself.

The second 5 mile block didn't go as well.  When I was running, I managed the pace okay, but around the 10 mile mark, my legs were really feeling the effects of the tough training week.  I stopped the clock for about 30 seconds about 5 times over the course of the last 5 miles. So the overall 10 mile pace ended up at 6:28 ... which looks great.  But frankly, I need to be able to run that without stopping the clock.

So all in all it was a good long run, and a very positive building block for my race.  I think if I wouldn't have been sick, and I hadn't just had two tough workouts on Thursday and Friday, I most likely would have been really close to my workout goal.  But for now, I'll take it.  We need more weather like this!  Have a great weekend!
... be great today!