Sunday, February 15, 2009

Uptempo 7 Miles at CC Park

I ran a 7 mile tempo run today through Cherry Creek Park. Wanted to run close to a 7 minute mile. It's been a full week of training already with track work on Tuesday, Middle 3 on Thursday and a long run on friday. This would also make 6 out of 7 days running. Been a while since I had a full week like this.

The theory behind the tempo run was that I am training my legs to respond at tempo when they are fatigued, to try to maintain a challenging pace when all they want to do is kick into easy run mode and coast home. I'd say I had partial success. Started off with a good Pace and faded a bit at mile 5 (the last 2 miles are uphil for the most part). One hill in particular seemed to suck the life out of my legs, the one from CC Park up to Parker and Bellview, probably the steepest hill in the area. I probably ran about half at my goal pace but I felt good, especially coming off 14 miles yesterday. I was a bit frustrated with the Garmin watch. The 1/2 mile splits were off from previous runs on the same course. For whatever reason it was about 1/10 mile off several times, so it was probably a bit closer to 7 1/4 miles. So I think my overall pace was closer to 7:10, similar to the 10 mile run where I had fresher legs. I maintained a heart rate around 160 which I think is a good threshold for a half marathon for me.

I finished the Route at Indian Ridge Elementary school which has a park. Gina met me there at 12:15 with the dogs after she had a long walk with them. We let them loose and they ran around a while. It was nice mid 40's with sun (a little wind made it a bit chilly). The dogs love it when they run free and we love to watch them run and play. Then we walked them home about a 1/2 mile. It made a nice cool down.

I plan to back off tomorrow, do a medium track workout on Tuesday, then taper down a bit for the 10 mile race on Saturday.

7 Miles at 51:38

Garmin Watch Data for Tempo Run with Heart Rate

Weekly Totals: 47 Miles - 6 Days
Yearly Totals: 217 Miles - 29 Days

1 comment:

  1. That damn watch is going to put you in an early grave! :)Someday you should just run how you "feel." Good run today though!

    ReplyDelete