Yesterday, Husband and I arrived at our getaway place in Pocono Lake, PA in the middle of the day. I’d napped–the car was so toasty and dry as Husband drove through the rain–and arrived rested from my 10-miler, and relaxed. I had slipped into Vacation Pace just as we’d crossed the Delaware Water Gap. We unpacked the car, cranked the heat, and I immediately set out to buy the few groceries we’d need for the next few days. Grocery shopping in the city is as close to hell without tourists as I can get–lots of pushy people oblivious to everyone else, cramped aisles, waiting in lines to pay, clerks who don’t know how to pack a bag without squashing my tomatoes and loaf of bread–but in the suburbs it’s nearly a pleasure. Plus, there’s a great country music station on the radio up here, which is my guilty pleasure whenever I get to motor around the Poconos. I got home, and made an early dinner for us, then spent the rest of the evening baking a pecan pie, poking around online and reading a manuscript for work. I sat by the fire so warm and snuggly in my fleece, and napped for about two hours. I hit the sack around 10:30, and slept until 10:30 AM this morning. Woke up, got the coffee going, fed the dog, marvelled at the shining sun, and whipped up some ham, Hvarti, green olive and parmesan omelets for me and Husband. (People, those omelets were so tasty.) Then, I set about procrastinating with determination and concentration. I had a 5-mile pace run, my least favorite workout, on the schedule and I would do anything in the hopes that it would somehow magically disappear from my training calendar.
Well, it didn’t (shocker!), so around 1:30 PM I got in the car and drove to the least-hilly stretch of road I know around here, the loop in the Timber Trails community. The last & only time I’d run this course I was with BG, my local running buddy. It was 40 degrees Fahrenheit under sunny skies, with a strong wind in the parking lot, but I knew I’d be more sheltered once I got into the wooded development. I popped in the iPod, locked the car up, and started at a trot for my mile warm-up. I was aiming for an 8:53 pace, which is what the McMillan calculator said my marathon race pace could be based upon my recent performance in the Ted Corbitt 15k. I figured I’d start there to see what’s what. I haven’t clearly formulated my goals for the London Marathon much beyond breaking 4 hours again, primarily because I feel like simply not getting injured is goal Number 1, and anything after that is gravy. I don’t know when I will feel strong enough to begin speed training, which will affect my time goals, too. I also remembered how I kept adjusting my goals when I trained for the New York City Marathon based on the results of my training, and I am getting the sense that this cycle will be a similar situation. So, 8:53’s it was.
I restated Little G when I began the at-pace part of the workout, because I wanted pure data; I didn’t want my mile warm-up and cool down to mess with the average pace. Despite my procrastination, and dread of this pace run, it wasn’t painful as I’d anticipated. The mile warm up helped me relax my neck and shoulders, which get really tense with worry at being able to run even splits. Well, I still didn’t run even splits, but I did run about 25 seconds faster on average than I’d set out to.
1st Mile 8:43
2nd Mile: 8:45
3rd Mile: 8:21
4th Mile: 8:18
5th Mile 8:13
Average pace: 8:28
During the run, I passed a lot of the neighborhood residents who were out for afternoon constutionals, all bundled up and mostly walking in groups or pairs, some with well-trained dogs. I passed just one other runner. Everyone was friendly and gave a wave. I especially loved the older guys, the ones in their 60’s and 70’s, who were out walking by themselves. One of them had in white iPod earbuds, how cool is he? Another I passed twice. On the second time around he gave me a big smile and said, “You’ve set a nice pace!” Awe what a cutie.
But the fact of the matter was, I had set a good pace, even though it wasn’t consistent. At no point during the run did I feel like I was just slogging through, or that I could not maintain the effort and speed. I suppose this means I need to set a more aggressive pace for these bi-weekly workouts. It also means that I need to make better use o the Virtual Partner feature on Little G, which so far I have tried to use but haven’t quite adapted to yet. It would be an accomplishment to run splits that were closer together, even if they were slower than an 8:28 average pace. Any advice from my readers? I’d love to know what you all suggest my pace should be on these pace runs, as well as how to keep the splits more even.
And now, I am back to Vacation Pace–I’ve tweeted and blogged, and will soon turn my attention to making dinner and then kicking back by the fire with a bottle of beer and my Sony eReader to read my second manuscript of the weekend. I’m not running again until a tweet-up run (followed by adult beverages) on Tuesday evening. Vacation Pace–the most natural pace of all!
Matilda. She's always on Vacation Pace.
Pigtails Flying 
Love Matilda! She looks regal sitting by the fire there.
As far as advice about pacing and stuff, yeah not so much from Baby Bear. Wish I could help though and I will be interested to read what others have to say!!
What a great run at 25 seconds faster. Take it and run with it!!
Oooh adult beverages!! Yikes!! I am a Baby remember?
Vacation pace is the best pace of all. Nice run today. It is so hard to be a slave to the ‘schedule’, and to me it sounds like you got pretty darn close. So, wtg!
Ohhh I’m so jealous of your warm, cozy fire. I’m having an out-of-city experience but the burbs of the Jersey shore are still chock-full-o-idiots. I did see one really cute older man on my ride this morning who waved and smiled. I miss the mountain feel of my years in NH though..thanks for bringing me back there for a few. 🙂 Enjoy vacation pace.
I assume that by “pace run” you mean marathon pace.
I took the liberty of plugging your recent 15K into the RunWorks calculator (based on Daniels) and came up with a 3:49 marathon, a 8:44 pace. (It predicts, BTW, a 39:24 8K, which is pretty close to what you also recently did).
This is important for two reasons. First, your current training pace should be based on your current condition, based on a recent race time. This is because one assumes that recent race is a proxy for her current fitness and thus sets the bar for the appropriate paces for stressing the various systems targeted in a workout. As one gets into better shape her times should improve and, using the magic formulae, her workout paces should drop a bit.
So your 8:53 “pace” seems a tad slow. But color me suspicious. Were I to run a workout 20 seconds/mile faster than my marathon pace, you’d be scraping my remains off the road. It’d kill me.
This brings the second point (and you did solicit this). Using the maxim post hoc ergo proptor hoc (which is actually a fallacy), your waving to the Cat has spurred you to bigger and better things. Actually the second point (second-and-a-half?) is that you just might be a tad faster than you’re giving yourself credit for.
As to keeping the pace even, don’t worry about it. If you feel comfortable and relax, it’ll come. Miles 3, 4, and 5 are pretty close, and going in the right direction.
And, yes, Matilda is mighty cute.
Joe this is fantastic analysis! Thank you so much! If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting I should run my marathon-pace workouts at 8:44’s, with the hopes that as the season progresses that will get faster. I do hope to run a couple (if not more) benchmark races during the training period, so I could use those to determine new pace run speeds.
Remember what Joe (from Nike) said last year…when you find a nice trail with no inclines or declines and zero wind, then you should shoot for perfect splits. Otherwise, there gonna be some variation.
Also, I ran 3x last week (not including the race). I know its a baby step, but I’m back!
EN I am so so happy to hear you are getting your groove back. Let’s run together early on 2010, please?
Great photo of the pup. And, good work for finishing the five mile tempo run. I’m learning that going for hard runs in the morning makes the rest of the vacation day feel even more relaxed and enjoyable. Sounds like you learned that too. 🙂
Oh, and I think the slow first couple miles is fine, especially considering the weather. Even with the warmup mile, settling into a groove can take time. Don’t forget that hills, etc. might be messing with your pace too.
Who makes bigger/better fires than me, huh?!
It satisfies my inner pyromaniac!! There’s something fun about chopping down a dead tree, cutting it up, splitting it, gathering kindling and starting that fire to warm up the house.
Matilda loves laying by the fire. What’s incredible is that never gets cold, regardless how far below zero it is. A true beast if there ever was one!
rD
TK,
I think that you should set your sights faster and that you should go with the 8:44 as your Marathon Pace. Not knowing how you felt during this run, my assumption was that it wasn’t that difficult and that you gradually sped up. But Robert raises an interesting point. Did it feel more like a tempo run than an MP towards the end? That would make more sense given your 15K time.