When the Going Gets Tough…

There is not much to write about from last week’s training session. Then again, training is supposed to be ho-hum. It’s a daily grind, laying one brick at a time, paving the road to the next start line.

I am particularly proud of last week’s tempo workout. According to Hal Higdon, the tempo run is supposed to be a continuous run with an easy beginning, a build-up in the middle to near 10K race pace, and easing back and slowing down toward the end. He says you need to listen to your body and can’t use your watch to figure out your pace doing this workout. However, I find that difficult to do.

Last Wednesday’s workout consisted of a 10-minute warmup, a 25-minute crescendo to 10K pace and decrescendo, and a 5-minute cool down. The app breaks down the tempo into five 5-minute blocks. I modified them to my paces rather than what the app suggests. My paces were 9:09/mi (marathon pace), 8:40/mi (half marathon pace), 8:10/mi (10K pace), 8:40/mi, and 9:09/mi.

It was warm and windy, and I found it hard to hit the paces. I hit the first four paces within -3 seconds (9:07/mi., 8:37/mi., 8:09/mi., and 8:37/mi.). I was ready to quit for the last 5 minutes; however, I kept pushing every tenth of a mile. I slowed down too much for the first 1.5 minutes, but I was able to get it into gear for the next minute. Then, I faded a little for the following minute. Ultimately, I kicked for the last 90 seconds and came in a little ahead of pace at 9:04/mi.

The final results were this very symmetrical-looking graph from Strava and the lesson to keep trying even when the going gets tough.

This lesson carried over to my Friday 6 Mile Fast run. I missed my pace by +18 seconds in the first mile and worried about hitting my pace for the rest of the run. Mile 2, I came back too fast (-12 seconds) and worried I came back too fast. I tried to back off the throttle on mile 3 with little success (-10 seconds). Then, I settled into marathon pace for miles four (-1 second) and five (-3 seconds), which were the hardest miles. For the last mile, I put in some kick (-13 seconds).

When have you learned from when the learning going gets tough? I would like to hear about it in the comments below.