Day 353

Wednesday, speedwork, but on my own. 7.09 miles, 5X 1000M: 7:08/mile, 7:02/mile, 7:07/mile, 7:16/mile, 7:40. The last two were mostly into the wind. And the wind was strong. I wasn't very happy.

Thursday: 4ish mile recovery jog with the dog. He wasn't very happy.

Today: 8.19 miles, 2 X 20 minute tempo. And then once I found out how cold it was, I decided to drop the second tempo run and put everything into the first, one and only. The two intervals don't seem to work in the cold; things seize up and it's unnecessarily unpleasant. I'm not sure why shorter intervals work better in the cold, but the long repeats degrade much more. Just running one interval was much better. My average pace was 7:40/mile. I'm very happy with that considering the cold and hills (the run took me over two bridges). The wind didn't feel like much of a factor, though, thank goodness! There wasn't much of it!

This was a much more satisfying 'tempo' workout than last week's--the effort was a bit more than tempo, I guess, but I like to do shorter and harder tempo runs anyway and maybe I should just stick with doing 20 minutes hard instead of trying to do 40 minutes or whatever at an easier pace. It doesn't work as well. I've done many many more 20 minute hard 'tempo' runs than 30 min, or 2X 20, or 45 min, or whatever...why not do what I don't have to think about?

I jogged home and grabbed the dog and finished off a few more miles. It felt really good. After a while, the tiredness wore off and I was coasting pretty nicely. It made me remember that 8ish miles used to be my favourite jog distance (just like 20 minutes hard is my favourite tempo workout). 8ish miles is a very satisfying distance for some reason. -6 miles is so-so, tiring without being transcending, and 10ish+ miles can be really cool too, but is sometimes tiring as well. Around 8 miles usually hits the spot. I'm not in good enough shape for that to be an easy workout anymore, but I will be.

Not only did I combine two of my favourite workouts today, but the sun was shining!