Week 4 Tempo

Yesterday’s plan called for cross training. It was starting to rain after I dropped the kids off at school, but that was just an excuse. I was exhausted. I got home, read a few blogs, and then decided to lie down. It is a good thing I set my alarm clock. I slept like the dead until 10:00 when I had to get ready for work. After work it was help the kids with homework, football practice, and cheerleading practice. No time for any cross training.

This morning I met Lana at the Rec Center for our scheduled Tempo run. The plan called for 1 mile easy, 4 miles at 5K + 35 seconds, 1 mile easy.
We picked a nice flat route. The problem for me was the bridge. We had to run on a bridge over the interstate. Today that bridge came during the warm up and the cool down. Usually I run as fast as I can to get over the bridge but today I wanted to save my legs for the 4 mile tempo and by the time I was doing the cool down my legs just couldn’t handle a sprint over the bridge. I need to find a way to make the bridge fall into the tempo part of the run.
I was running after a day of rest and was struggling to keep pace. Lana had her Garmin set to beep when we were off pace. The thing beeped just about the whole time.
Here are the numbers:
Warm up 10:13
Tempo 8:25, 8:30, 8:29, and 8:27
Cool down 9:54
At the time I wasn’t really happy with those number but once I got home and saw the target was 5k + 35 seconds I am thrilled. I think my BEST 5k was run at about an 8:00 pace.
This weekend is the Music City Triathlon and it will be replacing the first 20 mile run of my marathon training plan. I found out that current water temperature is 79.3 and expected to fall in the next few days “as the rain water from yesterday makes its way down from the hills to the damn”. I am hoping to get a lake swim in tomorrow afternoon. It will depend on if Ronnie can get home from his continuing education class in time to take the kids to soccer and cheerleading practices. I want to try out my new wetsuit, in case the water does get below the 78 wetsuit legal limit. If Ronnie doesn’t get home it time, I guess I will just do a few laps in our pool on Friday and have another day of missed training this week.