Meagan's Night Tempo

Time: 72:59
Distance: 16.85 km

W/u: 19:55 for 4.02 km
W/o: 8 km uptempo, 5 x long stride
C/d: 11:17 for 2.12 km

Meagan's workout tonight called for some pace work in the 5:45-5:50/mile range. I want her to feel more comfortable running under 6-minute pace for sustained periods of time. She has stated goals to run personal bests from 5k to the half marathon this spring/summer. Since she's just getting back to training hard, tonight was meant to reintroduce what running hard for a sustained period of time feels like. The pace was somewhere between her 10 mile and half marathon pace. We looped a section of road down by the Salem Willows that we run frequently.

Splits:
3:40.3, 3:40.4, 3:41.1, 3:43.2, 3:39.4, 3:39.2, 3:37.0, 3:40.0 for 29:19

(4:00 jog over to the Salem Common)

3 laps alternating hard/easy. Adds roughly 2k of additional running.

I think Meagan quoted me on the cool down as saying, "Yeah, that was just okay." And it was. I really thought we would be able to start in the 3:40/k range and drop down to the 3:35/k range by the end. She was breathing hard the opening couple of kilometers, but by 4k she had settled. I wasn't feeling great either perhaps due to the chilly weather. I was most impressed by her ability to hang on to the pace knowing she wasn't comfortable. I gave her the option to stop at 6400m (4 miles), but she opted to keep going and hit the last two splits perfectly.