Tempo, tempo, tempo

Of all the workouts, the tempo run is my least favorite. I don't know why, but it always intimidates me. For a tempo run you start running for a few miles and then push it hard for a few miles. My problem tonight is that I misunderstood the workout, I thought it was only going to be 5 miles but Bob had meant 7 miles. Now I ran 3 miles from work to the track already so a 7m tempo would be too much for the day. We compromised and jogged with the group to the Blvd and waited for the rest of the group at Butler.

The goal was a 10 min pace for the entire Blvd (3.4 miles). Here's the problem, I suck at checking my pace, especially for tempo runs with Bob. I get so worried about falling behind on my times that I run too hard. And of course that's what happened tonight, our first mile was 8:59. Joe tried to slow me down, but I just felt that I needed to run hard or I wasn't going to make it. That and coming back up to the Blvd there is a slight uphill so I wanted to build a little cushion. For mile 2 I tried to back off the pace but had to just push it and broke away from Joe for a while. You know it's a hard run when you are drooling and snotting all over the place, gross, but the truth. I knew we had it after turning the Blvd, there was less than a mile to go, at this point I was going to be able to hold the pace. Joe stopped yelling at me for going to fast and just ran. We hit the 3 mile mark at 27:36, HELL YEAH!! That was all I needed for the .4 back to Butler.

Stopping was another story, it took several minutes to convince myself not to puke but we got things under control and jogged back to the stadium. Not too shabby for a Tuesday night and a workout I wasn't really looking forward to. I'm sure tomorrow is going to suck, but I'll deal with that then. Here's hoping it was the workout I needed to work the kinks out of my legs :)

Days till NYC: 59
Miles trained today: 7.5