I had visions of doing Green today as a good easy effort. I know it sounds a bit contradictory to say that a 2500 foot climb to 8000 feet is easy, but they can be. Just gear back and grind a long slow climb. But the snow and the cold (teens) chased the idea out of my head.
I landed on doing something on the mill. I did not feel ready for a strong interval effort and geared into the idea of a longer run where I just upped the ante of my pace. I'd hesitate to call this a tempo (although by some definitions it might be ... as my heart rate stuck in the 160-170 for the latter portions of it) - rather this run was just a mid distance run where I wanted to run a stead state, and push the pace a bit to become more comfortable in that range. After a bit of a warmup for 3 miles (7:26, 7:15 {14:41}, 6:55 {21:36}), I began to gear down a bit to see how it felt. 6:03 {27:40}, 6:17 {33:56}, 6:15 {40:12}, 6:07 {46:20}, 6:09 {52:28}, 5:57 {58:25}, and 5:53 {64:18}. The effort felt all controlled - never was I anywhere near redlining, all just somewhere about comfort pace.
I realize this ain't much, but it represents some progress to me - and I will take it. I'd like to generally see the overall pace of my runs increase. I need to be careful to balance these sorts of efforts between easy days and hard days (as this is a bit of tweener). I am walking away from this one though thinking I am fully capable of coming back hard tomorrow. We'll see!
Props to PM for his 10 miler yesterday. Good work man - you are progressing. Tough conditions and it is January! | 