Tempo

I went out for a planned easy 6-miler last night and was surprised by how good my legs felt. I guess that only having run 35-40 miles in the past week let me recover a bit. Because it was also looking like rain, I decided to do tempo work last night. I warmed up with an easy 3 miles and then started to push a bit. It also started to rain as soon as I increased the pace.

I felt good and ran a rolling first mile into the wind in 7:02. After a couple hundred more yards, I turned and had the wind at my back. My pace increased and I was happy with a 6:49 second mile, done in absolute pouring rain. After that, I did an easy cool-down mile back to my car. When my tempo work averages under 7 mpm, I know that I'm getting into decent ultra shape. In my road racing days, that speed would have seemed too slow, but these days, it's a good sign of my fitness.

I was surprised to see ice on my car when I returned. Apparently, there was isolated hail during the storm, but I didn't get hit by any while running.

I'll do a moderate-paced 6-8 miler later today and then take tomorrow off running before my back to back long runs this weekend.