Tempo Run Around Lake Baldwin

Coach was in a good mood today and extra jolly in telling us that our workout was going to be a tempo run.  Two laps around Lake Baldwin.  Afterward, Jonny's Garmin showed it as 4.98 miles, but I'll call it 5 even.  So he tells us to think of our pace as 15k race pace.  I've never run a 15k, but I figure it is going to be slightly faster than talking speed and not as fast as 5k or 10k speed.  He told us to try to run a negative on the second loop around the lake.

I was running this time with Paul.  He normally runs much faster than I, but he has had foot problems lately and he just got back to running.  He said that he got some more padding for his shoes and socks and that helped with the pain, but he still doesn't have his lungs back.  I totally understand, because I just recently felt like I got my lungs back after a pulled muscle a few months ago.  Anyway, Paul asked me what pace I was gunning for.  I told him somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30.  I figured that if I can run that for 7 miles on my long run, then I should be able to handle that for 5 miles.  He immediately said we were running under 8 minute pace.  I mumbled in agreement and said that I was on the verge of sucking wind.  We kept it up though.

I ran the first 2.5 in 18:50  That's 7:32 average pace.  I stopped for 10 seconds to take my shirt off and wipe my face.  I got right back to my pace.  The entire time I was running the second lap, I thought I was going faster.  Not quite.  Paul only had 10 seconds on me and no matter how much I tried do some pickups along the way, he kept the relatively same distance ahead of me.  My total time ended up being 38:18.  That includes the 10 second stop.  If it was a race and I stopped for any reason, the official time clock wouldn't wait for me.  That made my second loop a 19:28 which gives me an average pace of 7:47 for that one.

My average pace for the whole 5 mile tempo run was 7:40.  No world record, but I feel good about my effort.