Notes
Well, I was not really looking forward to this for a few reasons. For one, I do not actually like tempo runs most of the time. For two...there's an awful lot of ice and snow on the shoulders of roads and sidewalks around here.
I decided I'd rather deal with a little more ice and snow than traffic, so I went to Blue Jacket Park to run in circles a mile at a time. It was the right decision. After three miles of warm-up, I did four at tempo effort. With the ice and snow, that was ~6:45 - 6:55, which is about 30 seconds a mile than my last half.
However, my last half had a lot better footing. Ice on almost the whole path, and snow 2-3" deep in places from drifting. The effort was at the right level, and that's all that actually matters. Considering the icy spots, I'm actually really pleased with this. I also can't sing the Praises of the Run model of YakTrax enough--those carbide spikes made me feel like I had really, really positive grip even on the ice, even at sub-seven paces.
Oddly, uploading the GPX file here gives different per-mile splits than Strava. Hrm.
This run also convinces me I don't need to run on a treadmill this training cycle.