My alarm was set for 7.30AM this morning I was out of the door by 8.10AM. I had my concerns between getting out of bed and getting dressed but by the time I left, I decided that I just had to get out there and run. The quicker I did it, the quicker I could be back home again.
And so I did it! I ran 7 miles and I ran the whole way. Last week I seemed to be having a bit of lack in… something and ended up walking for a minute once or twice during each run I did, even the easy 40 minute run. Today, my goal was to not only finish the whole run but to NOT WALK!
Last week, I actually did some tempo running and I really think that had a big affect on my run this morning. I have been avoiding tempo running from the beginning of my half marathon training because I’m no good with speed and I like my runs to be fairly easy which tempo running is definitely not. On Thursday morning I did 20 minutes of tempo running – 5 minutes easy, 5 minutes hard. According to my running plan, by this stage of my training I should be able to keep the tempo for at least twenty minutes but since I haven’t done any before, I’m starting off slowly. During my tempo pace I was running at 9 minute miles which is a whole minute faster than usual. Today, I was running under 10 minute miles pretty much the whole way and I have been finding it difficult to keep at that pace for few weeks now.
My splits looked like this;
Mile 1: 9:46
Mile 2: 9:33
Mile 3: 9:22
Mile 4: 10:19
Mile 5: 9:36
Mile 6: 10:08
Mile 7: 9:37
Mile 3 to 4 was the hardest, as you can probably see. I hit some sort of mini wall and was ready to stop but literally as soon as I started the fifth mile, I was fine again. Mile 6, I was running against the wind and up hill a little bit. I think overall I did really well. It took me 69 minutes which is well over my initial goal of 75 minutes! I’m doing it again next weekend and I’m aiming to keep at the same timing or even maybe knock another minute off it if I can make sure I don’t hit the wall again.