Wednesday, August 27, 2008 [14M]

~8 Mile Tempo. I would have like to get in a couple more weeks of base mileage before attempting any workouts but with the alumni meet just around the corner I figured I should put in at least a couple of hard efforts beforehand. I wasn't looking to run anything too fast, just wanted to put in a long, controlled effort. I headed backwards on the Foster City loop until the first mile mile mark and started the hard effort after making the turn. I was shooting for something close to 5:30 to start with, thinking that I could perhaps hold on to that for about 5 miles. I didn't really have a good sense of pace but thought I'd rather get out slow than fast. I was a bit too slow on the first mile, splitting a 5:47, but not feeling very smooth. After the first mile I thought that shooting for 5:40s was a more realistic goal and split 5:39, 5:41, 5:42 for the next 3 miles. I was 5:51 for the next mile, even though it felt like I maintained the same pace, but that wasn't very surprising since I've always timed that mile to be about 10 seconds long. I was running into the wind for the next mile and felt like I slowed down but split a 5:47, which reaffirms my guess that the previous mile was long. There were no more mile splits for the rest of the way but I kept going for 11 more minutes. Perhaps a little short to call it a full 2 miles but probably reasonably close. Not a bad effort overall but nothing too hard either, which is pretty much what I was looking for. It was hard to get myself in a workout mode, every now and then my mind would wonder and I had remind myself to focus on maintaining a good turnover. My cooldown was a bit long since I had no option but to complete the loop. I actually struggled a bit in the last 2 or 3 miles, which was somewhat weird, it was as if my body decided to shut down all of a sudden. I didn't think that the effort took that much out of me but it was a pretty hot day so perhaps I was a bit dehydrated by the end. I didn't have the strength to run any strides afterwards and was just glad to get this over with.