Nice temp, good tempo

Even with the daytime temperatures having stayed below 90, the past few mornings were still muggy and warm. But this morning at 6am it was about 67 degrees and the humidity was noticeably less. I was hoping for a good tempo run of about 5 miles at 7 minutes per mile. The route I normally run on does not seem to be too hilly, but when I am shooting for faster times this changes and the hills rear their ugly asphalt.

I was worried I wouldn't feel up to pushing it because last week I attempted this same tempo run but could not hold the pace. Only one of the five miles was under 7:00, the rest ranged from 7:02 to 7:17. Starting out this morning, I felt pretty good on the one mile warmup. The first mile of a tempo seems to be about finding the pace and getting the rhythm. I tend to check my Garmin quite often when doing any speedwork. In that first mile I saw 6:30, 7:12, 6:45, 7:05. Don't you wish you had a cruise control button like a car that automatically fed your legs more gas when needed and let up when not?

The first three miles, being somewhat balanced with the amount of up and down, all came in under 7:00 - sweet. Mile 4 was a bit less balanced with more uphill. I was worried when I kept seeing 7:20 and 7:30 pace when I glanced down. Somehow the mile average was 7:00 on the nose. I had anticipated that mile 5 would finish primarily on a downhill that headed back home. Instead it was over before that and also just under 7 minutes.

I was just starting that downhill I thought mile 5 would include. So I kept going, thinking, "I'll just go to the end of this road at this pace." But the turn off of there went to another down hill. "Only about half a mile more at this pace and I'll have done a 6 mile tempo run." There was a bottom to that hill that even goes back up slightly, but only for the last quarter mile. And that is how a 5 mile tempo turned into a 6 mile tempo.

A one-half mile cool down back to the house and I was a happy camper, err, runner. Even more exciting was realizing I had just run 7 miles (including warm-up) at an overall pace of 7:07. That beats my 10k PR average pace by more than 15 seconds per mile. I haven't run a 10k race for a long time and definitely need to find one soon.