May 22nd, 2009 – Half Marathon Training Tempo Run

From what I can interpolate from the training regimen, the tempo run is the run that’s supposed to acclimate my body to what will eventually be the race pace I’m reaching for.  The run explicitly calls out warm up and cool down components, where I’m covering 4 miles in the middle at my tempo pace.  The goal was 7:23 per mile.  Now, this is another annoyance or oddity in the training anyway.  The treadmill doesn’t support less than increments of .1 miles per hour and only establishes paces in terms of miles per hour.  The target goal was 8.13 miles per hour.  So, the question becomes, do I round down or up?  I have chosen up for all of these as the program actually is 38 seconds slower than my personal goal for the race, so I figure tweaking it to rounding up all the time makes more sense to achieving my aim.

This pace is roughly where I ran my first 10K back in February.  That should in theory mean I can easily complete this run without much issue.  Of course, that’s before I did whatever I did to my body that it forgot how to run. :-(  The run did come off without a hitch.  I had three minutes in zone 4 at the very end of the 4 miles, which shouldn’t really have happened, but it was just over the edge into zone 4, not like I was really struggling, so I wasn’t really concerned.  For all I know, part of it may have been me whisper singing to the Nano, which I am prone to do when I really get into a song that comes on.

Housekeeping:  6.0 miles in 49:30 for a pace of 8:15 per mile.  626 calories burned.  This is still fewer calories compared to the first easy run, and it just shows that my body really has remembered something it hadn’t had to recall until now.  I’m excited by the premise as it means when it comes time to really push my body, it should be ready.  I think my mind is definitely in the right place and I am excited to see what the rest of this program holds.

Cheers!