Damn, but today was hot.  And tiring.  Well, I don’t know if it was tiring so much as I was tired doing it.  I seriously thought about staying home, but decided that I needed to do the workout like I had planned since I missed it on Wednesday; then Thon called and offered a seven mile easy run instead which was, oh, very tempting.  Still, I stuck to my guns and was out at RunTex by 5:55 this morning for the Thursday make-up tempo run.  That’s when Gilbert told me that it started at 5:45.

Luckily this just meant that I did a half-mile warmup instead of a full mile.  I still got my pre-run drills in without a problem.  And then on the way from drills to the starting line it was finally light enough that I realized I had my Gazelle shirt on inside-out.  Which nobody told me; thanks, guys.  No, it wasn’t an attempt to start a new trend, I just dressed in the dark.  Ah, well; one of those days all around I guess.  As we waited for the Word, Shannon talked about her previous PR (low 28s) but that she wasn’t going to break it today; Brian said that he was just aiming to be under 30, which sounded pretty good to me.

And then all of a sudden we’re off!  I guess I missed the official start, but no big deal.  During the first 1/4 mile I tried to keep the pace down somewhat, but probably failed.  We’re always way too fast at the beginning of one of these, even if we’re not doing the 6:30 takeoff pace we used to do as a pack.  By the half mile point we’d spread out somewhat.  I was running with Brian, jockeying back and forth and trying not to drop back, but not to run too hard either.  I mentioned that no matter what, once it thinned out it always felt like you were running in the back of the pack; he chucked at that, but its pretty true.  We were maybe 7-8 seconds behind a small pack of women including Shannon and someone I didn’t recognize in a red top.

That’s pretty much how we stayed until the turnaround at 2 miles, too.  I had been keeping my breathing down to a 3/3 pattern for a lot of the run, and was actually feeling pretty reasonable considering how abnormal my week’s been so far.  Then about 10 seconds after we turned around, Amy came up from behind and just ran smoothly past us.  Where did that come from?  I picked it up a bit and followed her, but didn’t want to push it to catch up if she was going to be a powerhouse.  Brian dropped back a little later, and I just spent the rest of the run following Amy.

With about a mile to go, I saw her pulling alongside the woman with the red top I’d seen earlier with Shannon.  Another half mile or so later I passed her as well — not that tempo is competitive, of course not, but its always fun to pass someone.  I picked up the pace and tried to reel Amy in, but she had some serious legs today and just got faster herself.  I kept thinking that Brian was going to catch me, so I just concentrated on keeping a smooth tempo and even breathing but not slowing down.  By the time we got to SRV, I really kicked down low but I still couldn’t make up more than a few seconds on her.

All that, though, and I still only managed a 30:58 for the run.  Not exactly what I’d hoped for.  Which was funny, because it really felt like I was going faster.  I found out later that nobody had the times they were going for, which made me feel a little more comfortable with my performance, I guess the weather really is a major factor still.  It was an improvement after last time, but that’s two tempos in a row that I don’t think I’ve done well on.  Maybe next month things will be working out better.

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