A little bit of speed

Today got started off on the wrong foot. I woke up late so I ended up getting to the park a little late and therefore got to work a little late. No worries, my job function is based off of the amount of work done and not how many hours spent doing it.

Well anyway I got to the park a little late and the plan was to do a total of 9 miles with some speed work in the middle. The speed work would consist of 2 x 1 miles at 5 mile goal pace (5:18) with 4 minutes rest in between. So I did my 5 miles which went pretty well, probably low 7 minute pace. Then I started the speed work. When I started the first mile I purposely started a little slow and worked my way to up the pace. What I found was that when I sped up my body wanted to do 5:10 pace. When I tried to slow down my body wanted to do 5:25 pace. 5:18 pace seemed like a hard pace to run, not because of the speed but because my body was not used to this pace. Only faster or slower than this pace. Well this is the pace I will be attempting to run Saturday so my body better get used it! I ended up finishing the 1st mile at 5:17. I ended up speeding up quite a bit to get to 5:18. After the first set, I wasn't too fatigued. The mile took some effort but I still felt pretty strong. The second set was a lot easier than the first set because by now I was warmed up. I still found it quite awkward to run at 5:18 pace. I ended up running at about 5:14 pace for 75% of the mile and then I just slowed down the rest of the way to slide in at 5:17 pace. This second mile was a lot easier than the first. I don't think this workout indicates much but it was good to get some speed work in and I felt that it was good for my pacing and turnover.