Yesterday morning I went out for a 3.5 mile tempo run. With a 1 mile warm up and a .5 mile cool down, it was going to be a nice 5 mile run. The plan was to take the first mile easy. Somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 would have been fine. Then the next 3.5 at a pace between 9:07 and 9:30.
While the first mile was on the fast side of my range at 10:30, I felt like I was slogging to get that fast. It was difficult. I sped up the second mile to 10:00 minutes, but it was hard to get that fast. The third mile was 10:07 and I was spent. I ended up doing a walk/run for almost another mile just to get home. I was well off my desired pace and even at a much slower pace I did not feel at all capable.
Since I have only had a couple of truly horrible runs in my running career, I don’t feel too bad about this. I don’t want it to happen again any time soon, but I am not letting it get me down.
Today I was supposed to do a 4 mile recovery run. Being that this week is camp and I had to be meeting people earlier than I normally even run, I ended up cutting my run short to about 3 miles today. I am supposed to run my recovery runs at 11:30 / mile, but 10:30 is what I did today and it felt easy.
Why one day the pace feels hard and the next easy, I may never know.
Tomorrow is an off day and then I am supposed to run 5.5 miles Saturday. I probably won’t be able to run so will have to shift my training around next week to still get it in, but keep all the other runs as well.