Notes
Weather: freaking freezing (9 deg real-feel) and very windy!
Workout: 3 miles warmup, 4 miles tempo working from 5:30 to 5:20, 1 mile jog, 4x90s downhill, 2 miles cooldown.
I never felt like I warmed up during the warm up. The freezing cold air was getting into my lungs during the warm-up, so I knew that the tempo would feel tough. On the first mile, I felt okay running 400 splits of 82/83s and coming through in 5:31. My plan was to then pick up the pace by about 3-4 seconds per mile after each mile. On the 2nd mile, I realized that I could not go any faster. The legs felt okay for the most part, but my breathing seemed to be heavier when I tried to go faster. After a 5:33 second mile, I thought about calling it quits since it was very unlikely that I'll be able to work down to 5:20. My hands, nose and mouth felt frozen. Instead of calling it quits, I decided to just try and run the same pace for the remaining two miles. I ran 5:33 and 5:28 for the last two miles. I wanted my watch to read 4 miles for the tempo, so I ran for about another 100 meters until it reached 4miles. It was a failed tempo, but I'm glad that I still completed it. I realized that I can't knock every workout out of the park.
After the tempo, I jogged a mile to the Ontario hill for the 90s downhill repeats. The first downhill was a little too steep and I found myself doing more braking than running very fast. I then jogged further up the hill where it was a little less steep and then ran the remaining 3 reps. The hill was much better and I felt like I was running at about mile effort and controlled. By the end of the 4 reps, I could tell that some work was done.