Finding Another Gear

Distance: 8 miles
Time: 54:55
Avg Pace: 6:51

Its official, I have no idea what kind of shape I am in. Coming off my weekly PR last week (47miles) I thought today would be really tough. I'm going to attribute some of today's bamfness from getting more/better sleep. My new place is so much quieter at night. Well, its quieter in general. I've only been here since Saturday but I've only seen other people on my floor like twice.

The workout was suppose to be 1mile warm up, 3x2 miles @ GP, 1 mile cool down.

Going into the workout, I knew I was going to end up running faster than GP. I was running on the indoor track and I never run pace on that track. I figured I'd be running around 7:00-7:10, more of a tempo pace. After my warm up, which was a little quick for a warm up, I should have known today was going to be a fast day.

I started out at a comfortably hard pace. Usually, that's tempo pace for me. I decided to not check my watch until the halfway point. I was surprised when I saw my watch say 6:20. What!?! Where the hell did that come from? I tried to slow down a bit to conserve my energy for the other two intervals I had. Of course, I natually sped up again running the second mile in 6:17! I drank some water and walked three laps (a little more than 400m) before starting the second interval. It was just at quick as the first, 12:40 (6:18, 6:22). The final set was slower but still way faster than tempo pace, 12:51 (6:23, 6:29).

I had to look back at my log to see how I did last time I ran this work out. It was three weeks ago, on Feb 3. That day, I ran .5 miles between sets instead of walking .27 miles. My splits then were 13:45, 13:47 and 13:50.

I'm not going to day that I've got the PR for my half locked down but I'm going to say I've got a 90% chance of hitting it. When I set my PR a little more than 4 years ago, my hardest workout was 2x2 miles which I struggled to do @ 7:00 pace.

Now I've got to get my homework done!