It's been a rough week trying to get my runs in with bad weather and adding swimming into the mix. I was pretty tired today and I had a bad feeling about this tempo run tonight, but I felt I would have been madder if I hadn't attempted it at all.
SmartCoach plan had me doing a 1-mile warm-up, 4 miles at 10:18 and a 1-mile cool down. The weather wasn't too bad so I can't really blame it on that. I think it was mid to high 80's at the start with a nice breeze. It felt really good in the shade but it was a little warm in the sun. I was supposed to meet up with the other NoBo mentors and run and then have dinner and drinks with them but I even failed that tonight! If my speed work had been out of the way I would have met them and ran with them. As it is I was going further than they were so I planned on heading out early and then hopefully running into them after. Then as I was driving over to the trailhead where they were meeting I remembered that the bridge was being repaired and was closed during the week. I didn't think I'd have enough greenway to run from there so I went to Old Fort instead and ran to Cason and back.
My warm up was okay but going my 11-11:30 minute pace my legs were feeling tired and I was already worried about the 4-mile tempo portion of the run. I'm not sure if I was too tired to manage it or if I psyched myself out but it was a fail. I successfully completed the first mile on pace but strugged during the second AND third miles. I started the fourth mile out walking; not a good start, and I even think I walked some more in there but knowing it was the last fast mile I had to do I was able to put mind of matter and run that one on pace too. Sometimes I think the hardest part of my speedwork and tempo runs is jogging out that last mile cooldown. I'm usually sufficiently tired that the pace feels okay, or even hard, but after pushing myself fast for the other miles, the last mile just seems to drag on and and on and tonight was no exception.
I'm not sure if I'm more upset because I knew I wasn't up for this run and tried it anyway, or that I failed at maintaining the goal pace. I guess ultimately it's better to have attempted something and failed than not even attempt it but at the moment that doesn't make me feel much better.
My mile splits were 11:16/10:13/11:03/11:36/10:16/11:51. The one upside is that somewhere along the run I decided I would be happy if my finish time was 66 minutes and it was. 1:06:21.
I'm thinking tomorrow would be a good rest day and hopefully I'll be more successful during my long run on Saturday or Sunday.
Happy running.
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