Lunchtime Strides

As I mentioned in my previous post, there was a chance that I would have some downtime at work this afternoon.  My regularly scheduled 11am to 12 noon conference call ended at 11:15am and I didn't have anything on my calendar after that.

It's a beautiful sunny day in the low 80s, so I put on a singlet (that's "tank top" in runner's speak), and headed to the track for my Strides workout.

I warmed up with an 800m jog and then did my 6 x 150m strides at race pace with a 250m recovery.  I calculated that an 8:00/mile pace translated to running 150m in 45 seconds.  So I was doing my best to hit 45 seconds on my strides.  I did very well!  Here's my "splits":  45.1, 46.7, 43.9, 45.2, 42.5 and 44.5.

I'm starting to feel how to "lock-in" to an 8:00/mile pace.  This is much different than my running over the past 4 years or so, where I let my HRM set the pace for me.  I now really need to concentrate on my stride and how fast/slow I feel like I'm going vs just watching a number on my HRM watch.

I ended the workout with a recovery jog of 1 mile.  3 miles altogether at lunchtime.

This weekend's workout is another 2 mile time trial.  I am planning to run the first two miles of the 5K course again, and this time I'm hoping to have enough left in the tank to run the rest of the race course at a slower pace (last weekend I had to walk the rest).  I'm going to try to map out where the 1/4 mile splits are and try to get as close to 2:00 per 1/4 mile split as possible.  I'm hoping for as close to a 16:00 two miles as possible.