believing in Coachypants more and more!

You know those days when you just feel things falling in place? Well, last night’s run was one of those runs. Plan was 8 miles, with 2 easy, 4 faster (going by feel, but had thoughts of sub-8:30pace in mind), and then 2 easy to get back home. I was feeling tired, and not really in the mood to run, so I put on some music to distract me til I found my zone. And I found it —

My easy warm up was a comfy 9 pace, and then I managed sub-8 for the first hard mile! Good motivation came first when I spotted a guy ahead who looked like he shouldn’t be able to run a 10 min mile but that I wasn’t catching — I had to catch up just to see when I was by him what speed he was at (7:20ish)! Wow that was a hard mile, I thought. Huh, wonder if I can do sub-8 for another. So I did. Then came the thoughts of doing all 4 at that pace! I knew the outbound direction was a bit tougher, so I thought I could, but I was feeling the pace! My legs were starting to burn a bit. Made it though 🙂 My 4 fast miles were 7:52, 7:56, 7:36, and 7:29!

Feeling a bit tired, I looked down and saw my total time. My 10k PR in a race is 53:07, and while I have come close to it in training, I was way under it! So I kept up a good pace for another .2 miles, hitting 10k in 50:30!!

Content, I stopped checking my watch, and just let autopilot take over. Yet in an hour I was just over 7.3 miles!! That’s my farthest in an hour EVER! And parts were not at all pushing it.

So in the afternoon run I almost skipped and just played by ear, I stayed under 8 min pace for the main set, PRed 10k and hour. Yeah, I’ll have some more of those training theories now Marky!