Tempo Tuesday

This morning was my first attempt at a tempo run for this training cycle, 8 miles total with 4 of them at tempo pace. Unfortunately I had done almost all my tempo runs in the winter on a treadmill and had pretty much been spoiled by not having to worry about pace. I figured I should try a tempo pace of around 7:38 min/mile which is what I trained at for my spring marathon in line with the Ultimate Marathon 8min/mile training plan.

I had forgotten how bad my polar distance monitor was at determining pace when I was running at paces different from what it had been calibrated at. It's pretty accurate right now running at 9 min/mile. Not so much so when trying to run 7:30. I was beat after my first mile even though polar said I was barely running at 8min/mile pace. I ended up stopping after each mile to take a short walk break. I also ended up running 4 laps around a local track to try and get a sense of how off it was. First lap done in 1:46, which is a 7:08 kile though polar thinks I only ran 370 m or a 7:42 mile. I slow down a bit for the second lap but still a bit fast at 1:51 which was a 7:25 min/mile when polar thinks I did at 7:57. Last two laps were pretty much on tempo pace at 1:53 and 1:54, but polar thinks I did these at slower than 8min/mile. I have to figure out a better way to pace myself. I really don't want to have to do my tempo runs around a track and have no wish to get on the dreadmill again.

I'm pretty disappointed with this run. I realize now that the blood donation last week is really affecting me more than I thought it would. Even though next Tuesday is supposed to be a general aerobic run with strides, I think I'll probably try to redo this tempo run.