6 Miles - 9/12

Believe it or not, running in the rain can be an oddly enjoyable experience. Provided you are wearing proper running clothes that dont hold a lot of water, and you are able to keep your feet relatively dry, there is something incredibly soothing about having rain drops hit you while you are running along.

I debated whether to go on todays run. My legs and everything felt fine this morning, but as the day wore on, some parts of my left knee seemed a little inflammed still. While I'm a little hypersensitive to knee injuries due to running, I also know that many times, knee pain will go away if treated properly (RICE = Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation). However, given all the scheduling factors for the next few days (leaving on Sunday for a week, Monday being long run day, tomorrow being the scheduled rest day), I decided to give it a shot, figuring that I'd more then likely have both tomorrow and Sunday as rest days.

So once I decided to go for it, I thought it would be cool if I were able to run the 6 miles in my secondary goal race pace of 9 minutes/mile. Since yesterday was a slow tempo day, and with two rest days coming up, I figured I'd shoot for an average HR of about 165-170, and see what I could do in terms of endurance and pace at the faster tempo.

So after the warmup first mile, I found that there was no way I was going to be able to keep up 165-170 for the entire six miles. So I quickly decided to go with 8 minutes at the 165-170, followed by 4 minutes of a slow jog where I would try to get my HR down to 150. It didn't take too long to discover that getting down to 150 was going to be difficult, as it would get down to maybe 158 or so, but generally stay at 160 for the 4 minutes. Oh well - 160 it was.

Leg 1 - 16:54 avg HR 154 (2 miles - includes easy warm up mile)
Leg 2 - 4:01 avg HR 160
Leg 3 - 8:00 avg HR 168
Leg 4 - 4:04 avg HR 162
Leg 5 - 8:16 avg HR 169
Leg 6 - 4:00 avg HR 162
Leg 7 - 5:55 avg HR 173

Total Time - 51:30
Total Distance - 6 miles
Avg HR - 163
Avg Pace - 8:35

Well, slap me in the ass and call me Sally!
Would you look at that!
Not only did I reach 9 minute miles, I was darn close to 8:30 minute miles!

I really doubt I'd be able to keep that up for another 7 miles to do that for an entire half marathon, but it is encouraging nonetheless.