mbehr, how do you get up so early and have a good workout? I'm about 10-15 seconds per mile slower at 5am vs 5pm.

 

Only in my dreams....  I'm not getting THAT optimistic now.  You going to guarantee that Trent stays away and we get nice 40° weather with a tail wind?

Heh, no, and I don't know what formula works for you....that's just a pattern I noticed back in the day...  n=1

Good to be conservative and be pleasantly surprised over the last 10K though.

This morning I felt like it was race day because I had mile repeats planned at a pace I wasn't sure I could do.

I just ran a 5k in 22:18 last weekend, (7:11 pace), but there was snow that slowed me down a little and other excuses, but that's what I ran.

My workout plan was 1 mile x 4 @ 7:00-7:10 with 3 min recovery.  I was freaking nervous all morning and when lunch time came, I hit the track. I was pleasantly surprised.  My splits were: 6:58; 6:53; 6:53; 6:50.  I don't think I've ever ran 4 miles under 7 min pace in the same day before.  I'll see how this translates into race times pretty soon, but I'm really happy about the workout.

Good job, Tony.  Nice workout.

Got back on the workout wagon today...

6 x 800 m ease into 5k pace.

Paces: 5:50 / 5:45 / 5:42 / 5:30 / 5:33 / 5:30

Felt pretty decent.   Two attempts at sub 17 coming up (end of the month and early may),  most likely early may if it happens.

I had a tempo run scheduled for last night, but figured since I have a race this weekend it would probably be better to just run easy.

The first mile I started out nice and easy at a 9:25 pace. I was relaxing nicely and not paying attention to my pace and toward the end of the third mile noticed I was running a 9:07. Oops, that shouldn't be easy for me. I was enjoying the run and decided to just go with it trying to stay relaxed and just get into a rhythm.

Mile 4  cruised by in 8:46. At this point I'm thinking I probably shouldn't go any faster, but the effort still felt reasonable, so just continued to run without really thinking about it. My pace continued to slowly speed up and I finished mile 5 in 8:23.

One mile left to go and I was still feeling pretty fresh, so I decided to see how fast I could finish, but without really pushing hard. Just trying to run relaxed and smooth. The last mile was not easy effort, but it also didn't feel hard even though it should have at 7:46. Pushed a little on the last .2 to finish the 10K in 53:53.

Not blazing fast by any means, but almost a minute faster than my 10K PR and it didn't feel anywhere close to race effort. If I can run like that Sunday I'll be very happy.

It was only a 6 mile jog, but it was my first pain-free run in a month.  Having been told that my issue was a weak/inactive hip flexor causing me to "throw" my leg around with my hip and land with my toe turned inward, stressing that muscle in my butt....I focused for the entire run on keeping my pelvis square, my foot tracking straight forward, and forcing my foot out a bit more left than I would if relaxed.  It was distracting and a bit tense to do this but I forced myself to without fail.

The result....Absolutely NO PAIN!!!  I could have kept going but I figured, why push it.  The goal is to correct the problem, not over-do it and break myself.

The only thing that got sore was that weak hip flexor.  That totally makes sense...don't use a muscle and compensate to spare it, so when you force yourself to do things right it's not used to it and gets sore from being used.

But that means that in a couple days it will be stronger....