uʍop ǝpᴉsdn sǝʇᴉɹʍ ʇI
Today my scheduled run was 11 miles with 7@7:20. My problem is that I live in a hilly area and I don't always have time to drive to a trail or somewhere that is flatter. I warmed up for two miles and then hit the gas for my 7:20 pace. About a half mile later I hit the first hill and started to push it to maintain my pace. On the other side of the hill, going down, I looked at my watch and I was at 6:25! Holy cow! WAY too fast! The rest of my run was like this and I never found any consistency. I even blew up in mile 6 of the push and had to slow down to 8:10. I just went easy the last 3.5 miles and my tempo run was a bust. So, when going uphill on a tempo run, is it ok to be slower that your goal pace for that run? I know you can't always (or ever) "make it up on the downhill," so what then? Or is it just a bad idea to do a tempo run in a hilly area if you know you can't make your pace?
I live in an area where you will be running hills on most runs unless you head over to a old converted rails-to-trails path. I tend to look at this way...
If your plan calls for 7 at tempo pace and that is 7:00/mile (using a round number to make the math easier) I would shoot for a 49 minute tempo run section and not worry too much about variations in the hill sections. I concentrate on a fairly even effort. I may push it a bit on uphills as I also try to not have large variations in pace that steep or long hills could produce so I do try to plan routes to avoid as many of those as possible,
I will say that if I was continually going up and down hills I may just go find a flatter area/trail for these workouts.
I have nothing to offer that addresses the specific question. I just wanted to say that 7 miles @ tempo is quite the effort if 7:20 is your tempo pace. I know this workout is in the Pfitz plan, and when I followed Pfitz I always scaled the pace back for these long tempos ala Daniels, or I cut it a bit shorter. That's all. Carry on.
Are we there, yet?
I think you can answer your own question if you can answer this one: If that was a 7 mile race over those hills, would you hold the same pace the entire distance? Once again we come back to the concept of perceived effort vs. pace. An array of factors can affect our pace, including hills. Perceived effort is more subjective, but more importantly is not affected, or at least not affected in the same way, as pace is. If you run a 10K on a flat course you will exert a certain perceived effort. If you exert the same perceived effort on a hilly course, your time will be slower. Take that back to your tempo run. The workout is most likely predicated on a flat course with no significant wind or temperature extremes. When actual conditions aren't ideal and you want to run at the same perceived effort, the pace has to change and you have to run slower but at the same effort.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
I agree with George-- focus on effort, not pace. My tempo pace is around 8:00, and I usually do my tempo runs in a fairly hilly park. If I'm hitting 8:20 on the uphills and 7:40 on the downhills that's not a bad thing, it means that I'm right around 8:00 'effort' the whole workout. Don't push too much on the uphill, and don't slow so much on the downhill that you're not maintaining tempo effort, even if it means you have to be quite a bit faster on the downhills.
When I am trying to dial in a 'race pace' (ie if I have 4x1 mile @ 10K pace or something like that) and I would rather get the practice running *at* the prescribed pace, I'll find the flattest mile of the park and just do repeats back and forth... This is the kind of thing a track is good for, but there's no track that's very convenient for me.
Anytime you're running hills, you probably want to do it by effort / breathing. Tempo runs can be run in two ways: (1) effort near LT or (2) constant pace. #1 is the interpretation most often used as to the purpose of a tempo run. Your pace will slow going uphill and hopefully you can run fast enough on the downhill to keep the effort up. If your hills are too steep to keep the effort up, then do what you can.
However, if you run hills most of the time and are used to the constant shifting of gears, running a flat tempo where your legs are doing the same thing for 20-40min can take a lot of concentration and provides a different stimulus than the hilly tempo. It can be good if your race is flat.
Most of my tempo-ish / subLT runs are on rolling hills - 20 min outbound, 30sec turnaround, 20 min inbound. At least when I'm in condition. I occasionally may do an uphill tempo, if in condition.
Good advice, one and all. When I started running, I thought it was just that, "running." Only now I am I just starting to understand the "thinking" part of it and how mental training can be. Besides living in a hilly area, my other problem is that I tend to be OCD when it comes to training. I now understand that there are times when I have no choice but to adjust a week's worth of runs or even adjust a run as I am doing it. Who know there was so much to learn? Thanks for the advice, everyone. Believe me, I take it to heart and put it to good use.
B-Plus: you are correct, I am using a Pfitz plan. I am in week 11 and it is going well.
Fuzzy: If I have time, I will definitely go to a flatter area.
wc: I have read about perceived effort before, and after yesterday's run, I know what it is. Man, I made that run way harder than it should have been. It was hard enough to begin with, but I made it worse. User error on my part, but we learn by our mistakes, right?