Saturday, March 24, 2012

Tired legs 8k PR

Tired legs 8k. I was looking for motivation to finish a hard workout because I've been kind wimping out lately (except Tuesday's Progressive - that one I pushed to the end) so I planned to use this 8k race as an incentive for a good fast finish longrun. Timed my start to allow 15@7mpm to get me to the startline exactly on time and got back a little early by running a little faster. My (brand new 310xt) garmin lost battery at mile 11 (btw - don't trust a brand new watch that says 50% charged if you haven't charged it yourself yet). I've been running pretty slow the last several months and even though my HR vs Pace seems to be indicating I'm in pretty good shape - the faster paces just feel too fast so I was hoping a short race would help MP not feel so fast:

Splits ended up 5:40 average first two, 6:10(with a turnaround), 5:40, 5:36(0.97 miles).

The "Race" was a lot of fun - good back and forth with several - chased down 4 in the final mile and ended up 5th overall, 2nd master with a finish of 28:46 (11 second PR - yeah my 8k PR was pretty soft). Weather was terrible - 62°F with 60°F Dew Point - but somehow after 15 miles in it I was pretty used to the humidity level by race time and it didn't seem to affect me much. Fun time and good confidence boost for this last few week to Boston.

I'm figuring I'm around 2:42ish fitness now - need a little cussion on that for Boston to be confident I can get my goal time 2:42.5 but at least it's starting to enter the realm of "feasible".