9/1 Tempo Run

Tuesday was the first tempo run of the new training cycle. And really, ever. :)

I wasn't sure what I was going to be capable of, so I went out with the goal of doing 1 mile warmup, then 4 at either Steady State Run(8:07/mile to 8:21/mile), or Tempo(7:47/mile - 8:07/mile ), paces, then ~1 mile cooldown, per McMillan.

Getting Garmy set up for the McMillan paces is going to be a pain, so I just wrote the ranges on the back of my hand and checked regularly. I was surprised that there was not way to set a pace range easily, on the watch. You have to set up anything other than an HR workout as a custom workout in Training Center. And to get the paces you want, you have to customize your Pace Ranges.

Using Garmy for Paces is a little frustrating. It definitely doesn't like sudden directional changes, and seems to lag a little on changes to pace. (I think it only samples every 4 or 8 seconds, based on the TCX file, so I think that makes sense). It would almost be better to have it ping you every minute or .1 mile with your actual pace from the last mile marker or something similar.

Surprising myself, since I felt a little sluggish, I was able to have a great tempo run, even keeping pace on all the hills on the route around the 'block', which was difficult.

Here's the profile for the 'block' (clockwise)



6.17 miles in 51:16 (8:18/mile) @ 157 bpm avg

9:12 @ 143 - Warmup

7:59 @ 160 - 80% Uphill
7:46 @ 162 - A second faster than goal. All downhill.
7:54 @ 163 - 95 % Uphill
7:51 @ 168 - 60 % Uphill, then a nice steep downhill
Average pace for Tempo component: 7:53

8:55 @ 151 - Downhill. And hard to come down from the speed, anyway.
0.17 - 1:38 (9:36/mile) @ 159

177 feet of elevation gain over the route. A good hard workout.