6 Mile Tempo, 200s

Time: 80:00
Distance: 12.5 mi.

Target: 6 mile tempo in 5:25 down to 5:00 on Town Lake; 200s or 300s on the track
Workout: 5:21, 5:15, 5:22 (5:12?), 5:28 (5:18?), 5:08, 5:05 - 31:41 (31:21 adjusted, 5:13s); 4 x 200m in 32

I may be uptight about this stuff, but I find it a little bit annoying that we don't tend to go by the mile markers on Town Lake, despite the fact that they appear to be right. We start our normal 4 mile tempo course a bit back from the 4 mile marker, we split the next mile a bit back from the 3 mile marker, and then we split 2, 1 and 0 right on the markers. Almost every tempo that I have done on that loop has had a long second mile... which is exactly what you would expect from this setup if the mile markers are, in fact, right. Now, this may not matter for the most part, as we all know what a good time for these "4 miles" is, and we're talking about it being ~10 seconds off. No big deal, right?

Well due to construction in the first mile of our normal 4 mile loop, Joe and I started at 0.0, ran out to mile 3 and back. The only thing is that we ran past the mile 3 marker so we could hit the "normal" spot. This added on 10ish seconds on both miles 3 and 4. Maybe this is just a stupid rant, but I really don't see the point of that when we have good markers. Anyway, this at least somewhat explains the splits (though mile 4 was definitely slow regardless... I got a bit unfocused as Joe ran away from me a little bit).


A nice section of Town Lake near the boathouse... part of the "long mile"

This was definitely a better workout than saturday, so I was happy about that. Workout stomach afterwards seems to indicate that I was a bit over my head (and that I ate a Snickers bar a few hours before)... but it always takes one or two of these to get back into things. Belly of left hamstring and both calves sore afterwards.