Notes
BOO-YA, Grandma.
10 miles total, longest run of the year so far, and also the most successful (albeit difficult) workout of the year thus far.
5 mile easy warm-up (4.5 with anders until he started his own workout- we had slightly different variations on a common tempo theme.
3 mile tempo
2 mile easy cool down
The cool down was going to be either 1 or 2 miles depending upon how I felt, and I ended up feeling great- a stark contrast to the slog a couple days prior.
The warm-up felt easy, and I was glad to feel good while anticipating a big effort. Those five miles were about the least worried about my knee that I'v been to date, and that was a reassuring feeling as the workout got closer and the number of miles I was from home continued to grow.
The 3 mile tempo was humbling, hard, and illustrated just how far I am from the fitness I used to know and love- but it happened! And that is the piece I continue to remind myself of as the days go on.
The goal was to run the tempo at about 7min pace. In hindsight, 7min is probably faster than my true tempo pace right now, if we're talking about normal, NORSE tempo standards i.e. the pace you could hold for an hour.
Given how hard the effort was, I'm sure I couldn't hold that pace for an hour. However, it felt like a great effort and it felt like a real accomplishment finishing, so I'm not so worried about the exact pacing.
Splits were 7:06, 7:05, 6:57- it felt like a decent victory just to be able to run somewhat near the pace I was supposed to be running after about 6 months away from any sort of pace training.
It started to get hard about 1.75 miles in, and the last half mile was quite uncomfortable, but I never doubted that I could finish, so that was promising. Additionally, until about the last quarter mile when I really started to labor, the limiting factor was my cardio, and not my legs. I'm going to be optimistic about this because I know my cardio has taken a huge hit over the last 3 months (I've done less cardio in the last 3 months than I've done in the last 10 years, and that's not an exaggeration) and I feel like more frequent running, especially of late, will improve that cardio base that has been lost. I was encouraged by the fact that my legs seemed to think running 7min pace was okay, and I didn't tighten up at all until the very end. Usually my IT Band flares up when other muscle groups get fatigued, especially my quads, and I wasn't worried about this at all through about 90% of the tempo, and that was a relief. I think the lack of overall tightness contributed to the fact that once I started the tempo I never doubted I would finish- it felt great to know I was finally taking a step in the right direction in the cardio climb I'm going to have to over the next couple months, and I had thoroughly convinced myself that as long as I wasn't risking further injury or irritation, I was going to finish that sucker.
The cool down was slow and felt hard, but didn't hurt, and didn't feel too terribly inefficient- all good signs.
I had promised Anders and myself that I would make the intelligent choice about the cool down, and not give in to a desire to simply hit double digits, and I truly think I did that. I'm still overly conscious and overly aware of my right side, and the fact that I felt confident in two more miles says a lot about the strength and durability that has come back to that area.