Today was a pseudo-race rehearsal. With a relatively hard ride yesterday, and a bunch of fatigue in my legs, I wanted to see what I could do over a similar distance to the race. The first five miles would be over hilly terrain, but not at any real effort, then the last three would be guns blazing on the flats. At least, that was the plan.
The first loop went well. I purposely held back as much as I could stand, and turned a decent pace (40:20 for 5.29 miles=7:37/mile). And then I took it out as quick as I thought I could manage. It's been a long time since I pushed to that line, even in my last 10k, frustrated with my inability to get the proper speed out, I didn't go hard enough. I tried to keep my form together, similar to swimming where running well as opposed to running fast was actually faster. I couldn't get splits so I don't know if I lost much/any speed over the loop, but my effort was significantly increasing over time.
My rough goal for the ToT 13k is 51:30. That works out as 6:22/mile. Today I got 3.2 miles in 20:22 (6:22/mile). So I can at least go race speed for a while. I think it's a pretty good sign that with this level of fatigue I can run half-decently. I sure hope I can unearth a little more speed in the next 5 weeks.
But first, it's nap time.
Run: 8.5 miles, 40:20/20:22
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