Tokyo, Week 8, Day 2; 3 miles, 8:12/mile.
A morning run was a no-go today, but I managed to sneak in a run at night while working from home at around 11 p.m.
I wasn't feeling too bad (even though cross training on Sunday got dumped due to work) and it was a comfortable 55ºF (13ºC) outside with none of the rain that we've had over the past few days. When I looked up what my run should be, I was a little disappointed that it was only 3 miles; because I haven't run for a while on a Tuesday, I thought the jump up to 4 might have already occurred, but I'm still at three, which feels like nothing at this point. In any case, I was in good spirits for a run.
Going out along one of my normal routes, I thought I was feeling Saturday's run during the first half mile or so, with my body kind of creaking along. When I got to close to finishing my first half mile, I checked the distance on my iPod (just to make sure it wasn't all messed up like on Saturday), and it wasn't.
However, it also told me that my pace was only 9:07/mile. Thinking about that now, on that course I hit the half mile point while going up a pretty steep hill, so the pace probably wasn't unreasonable, but my reaction during the run was, "Why am I going so damn slow?!", so I made it a point to pick up the pace, while keeping it at a pace at which I could talk.
At the end of the run, I expected to average out to somewhere around 8:30 or 8:40 per mile, so I was a little shocked when my average pace came out to 8:12/mile. In case you haven't noticed a pattern yet, I seem to run at a pace that's consistently faster than the pace I think I'm running at.
So I wonder what the chances are of me getting all my runs below 8:00/mile. The iPod clocked me at a 6:59/mile pace at the mile marker, but to be fair that was while going down a hill. Still, 8:12/mile isn't all that far from getting me below 8:00/mile, and I've got still got almost 11 weeks of training left to give it a go.
No comments:
Post a Comment