NYC Marathon Training Week #8: Thursday

Thursday~

The tempo work last night was  great.My plan was to run one mile for warm up and run for 25 minutes of tempo, around 8:20-8:30 pace, then cool down for another mile. I set my Garmin to beep at quarter mile laps, to save me from having to look at my watch. With that, i anticipated I would complete about 12-13 laps sound the track. There were times when I missed the alerts because I was listening to my groovy music to keep my cadence pumping. In the middle mile, my mind drifted somewhere else but the run itself. I was in auto pilot. When I checked my stats later, I noticed my pacing was off on those particular laps and it made sense why. For next time, I will have to work harder on staying focused for the duration of the tempo and stay on pace.  Maybe leave the ipod at home? On the other hand, the falling off pace didn't do a lot of damage to my goal time since I was more relaxed. It was unusual for I was actually running with rhythm. I can only attribute that to my body getting used to that kind of fast running more and more. That would be a treat to be able to run my usual 10K pace and not have it feel like pushing it. I should have stopped 7 minutes sooner for the tempo, but I was in a groove and kept going. That's how relaxed I was.  At the start of the tempo, I told myself not to look at the Garmin, just run and get into the rhythm. It worked. I don't like counting laps that gets in my head too much and makes the run longer. So not looking was good; it got me to relax a bit, which proved that I could have kept going at that pace. These tempos are feeling easier to run now. Let's keep our fingers crossed. I'm hoping it makes a difference. I've been in a rut for so long. Maybe this is the a sign of things to come.  Knock on wood.

When I woke up this morning, the day after my tempo run,  I felt good. My resting HR was 59, up 4 beats from my normal of 55.  Not bad, considering I did a 92% effort last night.
A  4 mile recovery run was on the schedule today. My hope was as the day wore on, I would continue to feel springy. Sometimes it takes a few hours before the tired feeling on my legs creep up, where in the morning I would feel normal and later on in the afternoon that heavy legs feelings would start to sneak up. 

As soon as I got home from work I changed into my running clothes and was out the door for a quick 4. It is amazing how vast the difference in temperature was from one city to the next and only 12 minutes away. When I left the office in SLO, my car read 79 degrees and it was 59 at home. It was foggy and misty when I ran, just the way I like it!  Got the run done at 9:14 pace. I kept up the quick pace, even though it was supposed to be a recovery run. I had a great run, weather was perfect and it was a good decision to wait until the evening to do the run. Looking forward to a wonderful rest day tomorrow.

Happy running!