To some people a tempo run starts out slow, builds up speed, and then slows down at the end. Not I. At least, not today. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This morning was pretty nasty to run in; come to think of it, it was pretty nasty period. Very humid, with extra gnats on the side. The temperature was fine, but the air just felt heavy and cloying. We did a one mile out-and-back warmup, and some drills, and then Gilbert divided us up, setting those folk racing this weekend to do fartleks while the rest of us did a tempo run.

Today, my four mile run started out at a 7:05 pace. Luckily I wised up and backed it down to a more reasonable speed, but that wasn’t the best way to start things off I’m sure. I ended up running about 20 meters behind Shannon, and we kept our paces synchronized remarkably well for most of the run. I wasn’t really trying to do so, honest!

For the first mile, I forced myself back to a 3/3 breathing pattern. For mile two, I let myself drop to 3/2. I didn’t look at my watch at all, just went off of how I felt. As we turned around to head back at the end of the second mile, I dropped down to a 2/2 pattern and started to push a bit deeper. I found out afterwards that Shannon wasn’t happy with her time at this point and picked it up as well - either way, I wasn’t closing on her.

I ran the third mile going for the same sort of feeling that I had at mile ten of my last half marathon. Pushing, but not going all out. That was coming up soon enough. When we pushed into mile four, I started to let myself breath a bit heavier and really concentrated on my form - at this point I’d pretty much forgotten about the miserable weather, and was really getting into the run. The only problem was that I wasn’t closing that gap!

I started to pull harder with about 600 meters left to go, as we turned onto the final stretch of trail, and began to close. I was still keeping my breathing stable, but the speed was there. She heard me, and picked it up again, but I was still gaining. When I was about 30 seconds from the end the faster folk started yelling, just like a race… of course, they were yelling to her not to let me catch her! At the end we were both flying, and it felt really great, smooth and fluid, but she did end up beating me by about two feet. That’s fine, I had a blast! My last 90 seconds was done at a 6:30 average pace, which is pretty good for me on a trail workout.

The one downside was that our overall time was 31:58 (by my watch - hers read about 10 seconds slower, so I’m not sure what happened there). Either way, we only averaged an 8:00 pace for the workout. Now, that’s probably about what we should have been doing, but it felt like we could have managed things a little better. Still, we had fun, we got some good form in, finished up with some easy strides, and we’re ready for our long run on Saturday - I can’t complain.

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