No matter how I feel the night before, motivation is always hard to come by when I'm awakened by my alarm at 5:30AM. Somehow I managed to drag myself out of my oh so cozy bed this morning for a 5 mile tempo run. With my lofty goals, I can't afford to take any rest days and really need to be increasing my mileage.
I set out for 5 miles in the park this morning. There was almost a chill in the air. It felt really good to not be dripping with sweat before even starting the run. My first half mile or so was just warm up time then I picked it up to my goal pace. I was shooting for 5 miles at between 8:50 and 9:00 minutes/mile this morning. My first mile was 9:15 due to the half mile warm up included in that. Mile 2 included some nice downhill stretches so came out at 8:35/mile. Miles 3 & 4 were mostly flat and I nailed my goal pace at 8:50 and 8:49 respectively. I struggled with mile 5 and fought to maintain what I thought was a slower pace than I wanted. Also a good portion of it was going up the hills I had run down in mile 2. Surprisingly I completed mile 5 in 8:43. I was completely wiped out by the end of the run but pretty excited that I had hit my target pace for the run.
Today's Stats: I did 5.01 miles in 44:20 for an average pace of 8:50/mile. I'm pleased with that. I did 5 miles at a slightly slower pace (5 seconds per mile) than my best 5K pace.
I've set goals for my next few races:
9/10/11 - 10K: 55:00 That would be about the same pace as I ran this morning for 5 miles. I'm thinking I can add a mile at that pace over the next month.
9/25/11 - 5K: 24:48 That would be an 8 minute mile pace and would be about 2 minutes faster than my previous and best 5K. This will be a pretty serious challenge. I have 6 weeks.
10/22/11 - 13.1: If I decide to get serious about it, 2 hours flat. If not, I'll be happy just hanging with L for however long it takes us.
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