Friday, March 07, 2008

A tempo run by feel...

I'm in DC today, escaping Toronto just as another winter storm is set to dump up to 40 centimetres in the next 36 hours or so. Hope the March break crowd can get out of the city.

I tried for a very long time to catch a signal on my Garmin today. First, in R's balcony, then again out on the street. Then a third time about a kilometre into my run. I really wanted it to work because it was my 10 miler with 5 at LT.

My contingency plan was to run by feel. I would run at around a 4:20 pace and run for about 36 minutes to bring me in around 5 miles. I did two and a half loops of part of the Mall. It was a bit tricky cause I didn't know if I was running too fast. I timed each loop and the first and second were only four seconds off each other (not bad). At the end I did the 36 minutes flat. When I got back to R's place, I plotted the run on Gmaps and found that I did just over 5 miles (5.2 miles) in 36 minutes, which gave me a pace of about 4:17.5, which is actually about three seconds faster than the planned 4:20K pace. It also works out to 6:54 miles.

So after that I ran a bit more, then my freaking Garmin connects but goes wonky. After settling down, it captured a signal, so I reset it and finished my run.

Mileage:

Leg 1: 1.25K
Leg 2: 8.35K (5.2 miles at lactate threshold pace of 4:17)
Leg 3: 0.7K
Leg 4: 6.4K (Garmin finally worked for this bit)

Total: 16.7K or 10.4 miles

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