ALA BECK

Since my morning run was only scheduled to be 5 miles today, I slept in and ran it during my lunch break. My cold still has me all stuffed up, but I felt okay once I got going.

This evening's run was a 10 miler with the middle 7 "at pace". I decided do this workout on the dirt track, ala Beck, near my house. During my warmup I thought I'd try running 2 x 3 "miles" @ 6:40 pace or 2:55 marathon pace with a 400 meter jog between the sets. Once I started the workout, I checked my splits every 400 meters and I was surprised by how easy 6:40 pace felt. I kept clicking off the miles and decided not to take a break after 3 miles. Instead I'd go 6 miles straight. The miles continued to go by quickly I still felt good, so I just did all 7 that I had planned. My splits were 6:38, 6:42, 6:39, 6:39, 6:41, 6:40 and 6:48 (I lost focus - thinking about what I was going to write for my blog entry :-) ).

Needless to say this workout has me pretty fired up, especially since last week's 6:52 pace felt much more difficult.