The Tempo

For the last 3 weeks I have been following the half marathon training guide that was in my latest edition of Runner's World Mag. I decided to use this training plan for my upcoming fall half marathons because it seemed to be a decent change up from the one I used in the spring from marathonrookie.com. So far I am liking it much better.

In the winter/spring I didn't really have a plan with my program that included speed work, tempo and the long run though I am sure I should have. I just never "got" the whole tempo thing. That probably has to do with the fact that I was still not a very good runner. It probably also had to do with the fact that all my runs (short ones included) included at least 1 walk break. I still am not ashamed to take a walk break when needed.

SO anyway, the tempo. I never was good at this. Never even did it. I can do speed work which I still have a love/hate relationship with. I can do hill repeats, but often skip because let's face it...hills suck! Just being honest. ;) And then the long run, I got that one down and finally love the long run. But tempo is not something I felt comfortable with before. It is a part of my new program though. Every Thursday.

Yesterday my plan called for 5 miles with 2 mile tempo. Ok.
*My* plan was this... I had set myself up before that I was going to have a bad run, by the way.
I would run the first mile as a warm up. Then mile 2-3 would be my tempo run set at the pace RW suggested based on my last race (PRR 10k) and the last 2 miles would be fast (er).

Here is what actually took place.
Mile 1 - 10:06 which is faster than warm up pace for a semi longer run.
Mile 2-3 10:31 RW's training calculator said I should actually set my Tempo pace at 11:41 but y'all that seems slow. Even my half marathon was ran at a faster pace than that and I haven't ran a short run or even a long run at that pace in a long time. I just couldn't do it. So I set my pace at 10:31 and felt great.
Mile 4-5 - I don't recall the pace exactly because honestly I was all over the place. I finished the entire 5 miles in 51:24 and was quite pleased because my overall pace was just at 10:17 (i think) and that made me happy.

Happy because I successfully ran a real Tempo run for the first time. Happy because I had just ran 5 miles with NO walk break (and I even used an incline on the treadmill for part of the run!). Happy because I had set myself up prior to my run to have a bad run.

I'm happy because now with my running I am able to tell myself this...

courtesy of