What’s that? A four mile tempo run 3 days after Pervasive? Well, if that’s what the man wants… yes, the tempo run was on the calendar today, and it was indeed intended for everyone to do. Gilbert was late today, or rather we were all early - he had intended to give us an extra 15 minutes of sleep since its a short workout, but forgot to send out the email so we had an extra 15 minutes of standing around instead. Heh. We did our usual out and back warmup, then drills, and met up at the zero mile marker for the usual advice.

“Run 80% effort. Take your 10K pace and add 10-15 seconds. Its really dark, so run in the middle of the trail and don’t trip. Negative splits, my friends!”

Well… I did try to stay off the sides of the trail. Nobody, and I mean nobody, runs this one slow. I’d say that true 10K pace is probably a realistic impression. Still, it was pitch black outside in the trees, so that dampens things down a touch. Other than that, the advice was all good and we lined up to start. “Go!” Gilbert yelled, “My watch is running!”

And we were off. Somehow I ended up right at the front this time; I looked down after a tenth or so and caught myself running 6:15. There’s no way I could keep that up, so I slowed down and rechecked a few times. By the quarter mile point I was doing a more realistic 7:45 (+/-). Soon I found myself caught by Marcy, so I picked it up a bit, and from then on didn’t so much as look at my watch until we were done.

Marcy’s quite a bit faster than me, so I just wanted to see how long I could hang with her. About 3/4 mile into the race she pulled ahead, and I almost let her go. This is a pretty common problem for me, and this time I decided to dig down instead and caught back up with her 100M later instead. I started to run behind her but figured that wasn’t entirely fair, so I pulled up alongside her and we just ran together, pushing each other. We were both breathing hard, not going all out but a very solid effort.

At this point there were 3 fast guys (going much faster than us) out front, and the two of us were next. This is not where I’m used to being on these runs; having the Chicago folk sit out really changes the dynamic of the group. About 1.5 miles into the run I could hear more people showing up in back, but we kept picking the pace up and nobody passed us. Marcy was passing me on all the uphills, and I couldn’t help but remember that I’d told her they were my weakness, so I buckled down and kept hanging with her anyway.

I’d say there were about 6 people in our pack at the turnaround. I saw Jay and a couple of other people about 10 seconds back, and there was some threatening for the lead in the first quarter after that, but Marcy and I hung in there and stayed out front. With about a mile to go someone whose name I don’t know came out and passed us, we let him go. I was a little afraid that Marcy had a big last mile kick in her like she did last time (she was the Gazelle in the darkness in that last post). Not happening this time though, we stayed together until about half a mile to go and then I began to pull away.

Coming down the last stretch along Auditorium Shores I knew she was close behind me, but not exactly how far back; this made it easier to keep the pressure on. Sure enough with about 50M remaining I could hear her pickup up right behind me, so I dug down and sprinted to the finish, and I made it in probably less than a second before she did. What a great race! I mean, I know its a race against your PR, but still… a bit of friendly pressure makes it much more exciting.

I did PR too, by 10 seconds. Ran negative splits, too. It felt a lot faster than that, probably because of the problems in that first mile and the fact that I’m still congested from allergies - and we’re all still pretty tired from Pervasive.

My heart rate was slowly increasing, which means that this was probably a solid effort for me, on this day. I kept digging a little deeper with every mile, just like we’re supposed to. This isn’t terribly hilly but its not exactly a flat course either. I’m happy about the fact that I didn’t give up and let Marcy pull away, if I had this would have been an over-30-minute run quite easily. Our goal for these is that each time we go out and do it, we PR, if only by a second, so I guess I met that goal today.

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