I felt a little sluggish this morning when I got up so I didn't know what to expect. My water bottles for my fuel belt were in the dish washer waiting to be cleaned so I had to go with a hand held bottle. I don't like the hand held bottles because I don't like holding anything in my hands when I run. I checked the plan last night because I forgot what the times were for my tempo run. They were faster than I remembered and I was having a hard time wrapping my head around completing this workout as designed. The plan was 2 warm up miles, 2 miles at 8:00 pace, 1 mile at 9:00 pace, 2 miles at 8:00 pace, and 1 cool down mile. I spent some time this morning trying to figure out how to work in the 8 miles and trying to find fairly flat sections for the 8:00 miles. It was making my head hurt trying to figure it out so I just ran a route and whatever was coming, so be it. The two warm up miles were through a neighborhood and were pretty flat and my times were mid 9s. I stopped at Lakeside Elementary School to eat a Cherry Lime Gu. I tossed it in the dumpster before the fast miles so my pause resulted in a slightly higher time for mile 2. I hit the Kroger at MacArthur and Sandy Lake and went west. This is basically rolling hills that are predominately up hill. I have never come close to running 8 minute miles up this stretch. I decided to just dig in and go. These two miles were completed at 8:15 and 7:52. I did have to stop once for a car before I crossed a street so I think the first mile was really closer to 8:00. I was really surprised at the speed. My 9:00 mile would be mostly downhill so my route planning was either real good or real bad. At the corner of Sandy Lake and Denton Tap, the Frost Bank had a covered wagon in the parking lot with some guys dressed up like cowboys and they were cooking breakfast. I would have loved to stop, eat some breakfast and take a picture with them but I had to get going. I had a conference call at 8am. Bummer. The downhill recovery mile was completed in 8:47. A little fast but it was all downhill. Staring at two more 8 minute miles, I got on the gas again going east on Parkway. The first mile is a slow steady up hill climb for the entire mile. I crested at Samuel and the next mile was a steady slow downhill. If I could just work through the first one, the second should be ok. I was able to maintain 8:02 throughout the first mile. Once I went past Samuel, my pace picked up and I felt pretty good. I misread my watch at about a half mile into the second 8:00 mile and thought I was almost done. Once I realized I had another half mile left, I wondered if I could maintain the pace. No problems though, I finished at 7:55. Once the watch went off, I did stop and walk for about 100 yards and then picked up a nice recovery jog back to the house. I don't know what to think of this new found speed. It was really hard today but felt really good to continue getting good results.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/270618599
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