Tempo Triumph

Workout: 7 miles, 5 at tempo pace (9:44), Pace Gloves

Hey, it's my new hair!

Some day I hope to be comfortable enough to post normal, smiley selfies. That day has not come. Also, I need to sleep more. #darkcirclesfordays

I'm going to be vain and say I love it. I think it really balances out my oval face and long, long forehead. Attempting to arrange it for today's run, though, was a workout in itself. I'm going to go ahead and say I looked completely ridiculous. It was a sort of half-ponytailed (do people even wear those anymore?), Bic-banned, hair-clipped to hell situation. I would have taken a picture but I was afraid I'd lose the nerve to be seen in public like that if I looked at it too long. Must pick up some bobby pins.

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Anyway, today's run was an awesome way to come back from Tuesday's torture. Despite some major trail annoyances resulting from Sunday's snow dump, I felt really great the entire time and finished knowing I could have gone much farther. Always a good feeling.

I felt fantastic this morning following yesterday's rest day, which kind of surprised me. It's obviously way too early in the game to call my training plan a success, but I can't believe I just ran six days in a row. In the very recent past, three days in a row was more than I could handle. Even two days in a row was pushing it. I credit slow and easy miles (and the Hansons).

I was also surprised by how great I felt after my 400 repeats. Like, no soreness at all. I was worried I felt so sick because I was doing the repeats too fast, but the lack of soreness indicates otherwise. It seems the discomfort of the workout itself was magnified exponentially by the fact that I was doing them on a treadmill, it was 50 degrees hotter than my usual runs, and I likely didn't wait long enough after eating to do them. Lesson learned. I'm definitely on the lookout for a flat, well-paved stretch of road for next Tuesday's 600's. Wish me luck!

I admit I was worried about doing another challenging run just two days after Tuesday's repeats, but now that I've done my first tempo I can see the logic in it. Not only did I feel fresh following my rest day, but the 9:44 pace also felt really relaxed relative to the 8:30 repeats. In the past, I've found tempos to be much harder than repeats, but that was not the case this week. 9:44 was a breeze! It also felt great to stretch the legs out a bit and run faster than the 10:52 and 11:38 miles I've logged for the past five weeks.

I didn't bother to take any pictures, but I ran over by the dog park. This trail has been a pretty reliable winter running locale, but today it didn't deliver. The snow wasn't nearly as packed down as I expected, and while this was fine for my warm-up mile, as soon as I tried to speed up my feet started slipping all over the place, even with Yaktrax on. I decided that if I wanted to hit my desired pace, it would have to be a sidewalk run, so I veered off the trail to find some. This didn't work. Ice everywhere. As you can see below, I tried to find runnable sidewalks in three different directions. No cigar. It was extremely frustrating, and every time I started to get into a groove, I was forced to turn around.

In the end, I realized that the dog park actually had the most packed-down trail (dog park is a trail that circles University Lake), so I did my last two miles there. Finally, I was able to stop worrying about footing and just run. It felt great.

My strange route.

Let's check out some stats!

First warm-up mile was recorded as a separate workout.

I can't believe I just wrote that much about one run. If you skipped all that, you passed the Jeano intelligence test.

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I found out this morning my office is closed tomorrow. Spring Break, baby! Let's rage! I don't understand why a university-affiliated organization without any students gets a (very short) Spring Break, but I'll take it. Actually, I won't take it; I get paid by the hour so will still be working tomorrow. But at least I can do it at home in sweatpants!

Questions!

• Anyone else have a Spring Break coming up? Are you doing anything fun?
• WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITHOUT GOOGLE READER?! Totally forgot to mention this in the post but we've all heard about it at this point. Rude!
• New pope, huh? I love that he's Argentinian, but I haven't done my research on this dude so have no opinion on him as a leader. Not that the leader of a religion I'm not part of affects me in any way.