10 mile tempo

After a nice day off Sunday and most of today, I was ready to tackle one of my most difficult workouts on the training calendar - a 10-mile tempo at 7:50 pace. It was "one of those days" on the homefront where I was not showing any proud mom moments, to put it nicely. I was happy to head out the door (and wished Mike luck with them). I admit I cheated at the beginning and turned off the Garmin when I got to the hill a block from our house and walked up the hill - we'll call it a "warm-up". I just didn't feel like feeling like suffering on the 2nd block and trying to play catch up with the pace. But, I fully admit, it was cheating. The first couple of miles felt a little fast, but as I warmed up I actually felt like it was a nice running pace. I ran down the parkway to Lake Harriet, around to the bandshell, and back again. As I got to Lake Harriet I was feeling great - strong, steady, the pace felt right. Then, I turned around at the bandshell and realized why I was feeling so great - I had a tailwind! Ouch. The way back was more effort and I hit a few rough patches. I was happy to see some red lights on the way back, but it wasn't awful and I was pleasantly surprised. A great run to have in the bank! I ended up with a 7:43 average pace, much faster than expected.

The rest of the week looks pretty good... a ride tomorrow with the Birchies, some mile repeats at the track, a good swim, some hills and I'm planning on running with Todd on Saturday morning - we're going to do 15 or 16, should be fun.