Notes
So the plan was to run roughly 5 miles as a tempo run. I was hoping for somewhere around 9 minute miles. I chose this course to have a few hills to go over but still some good footing and stuff...
At the start, I immediately knew I was not as fresh as I thought. I didn't feel tired specifically, but I was very flat and the legs were kinda dead. I started off at around 9 minute pace, attacked the hill, and I knew this was going to be either really hard or a disaster before I got to the top.
I pushed down the other side and some of the flats. My legs were burning pretty bad. I finally negotiated out with myself that I would maintain this pace to the turn around, and then jog it back.
I got to the turn around in 23:03 ish. That's like 9:13 pace or so, with that big hill first mile being 9:30ish. So I was decently happy with that pace. But I really struggled to get back. It took quite a bit mentally to not walk back up the hill. I was just dead.
So, overall, much slower than I hoped. Much harder than I thought. I think most of it was that I was much more run down than expected. Also I should throw in there the 6400ish feet of elevation, just to make my list of excuses complete... ;-)
Onward!