Tough 9.5 miles tempo! Wednesday, Aug 31, 1:37, Shoreline Trail

Having missed the tracks yesterday because of a late meeting at work, I was keen on running today. The schedule mentioned 10 miles at tempo pace for Thursday. I decided to do them on Shoreline (La Avenida) trail today. The surprising part is this: these 10 miles were as tough to me as the long run (19 miles) last Saturday!! This is the route I took and it was actually only about 9.5 miles (the Google maps application underestimates a little because of having to do straight line approximations), to give it an average pace of just about 10 min/mile.

Why did this run feel so hard? I just felt less energetic today. I should have taken a powerbar at 5pm (I started the run at around 5.55pm). I had a very light lunch and then a powerbar at 3pm but I just did not have energy. I noticed it at the end of the first mile itself. Secondly, I started running tempo pace (8min/mile for me) a bit too soon... I did the first mile at slow pace but because the mile markers are only for about a 2 mile stretch around the La Avenida Trailhead, I started on my faster tempo pace immediately (I had planned to run at that pace for 2 miles). By this time I knew that this is not going to be a great run for me. I managed 8:15 for the first mile and about 4:07 for the next 1/2 mile before I saw my right shoelace untied. I had to stop after which I took a 1 minute walking break. Then I ran for another 3 minutes but the energy was missing. I needed to eat something. Luckily, I had brought a powerbar along with water in my fuel belt. I took half of the bar and drank one of the two bottles (of water) I had. This had occupied 3 minutes during which I was just walking. From then on I felt better, but I still had to improvise the tempo workout. I recalled an article that I had read (passed around on the TeamAsha mailing list sometime back) about how to insert tempo workout in a 9min run/1min walk schedule. I decided I needed walk breaks today. So, I shifted to a 3 min warm-up + 3 min tempo + 3 min cool-down + 1 min walk pattern. The warm-up and cool-downs were slower than the tempo pace by only 45-60s/mile. The 3 min tempo run in the middle was probably at around 9:00 min/mile pace. That guess seems to fit well with the overall average pace of 10 min/mile. I finished at around 7.55pm and it was getting dark. It was time to go home and eat!

Key learnings:

• Eat something (powerbar/banana) 1 hour before running
• Keep enough water (all 3 bottles in fuel belt filled) before starting to run