6 mile tempo run - 7/16

Today I revisited the 6 mile loop around the house. The last time I did this loop was on June 11, shortly after recovering from my back sprain. That day, I did the 6 miles in about 49 minutes, which gave me an 8:10 min/mile pace.

I was looking to do a marathon pace today to see if it would be any easier for me to maintain an 8 min/mile pace for longer than 5 miles. On the other hand, I knew I had mile repeats coming up this weekend, so I didn't want my HR getting too much into the zone of 170 bpm.

The main difference between todays run and the one from 6/11 was that today I did't stop, whereas last time I had to take a couple walk breaks.

The first mile today was done in 8:00 with an avg HR of 140, which is expected as it is a warm up mile. The second mile was done in 7:49 with an average HR of 166. At the time, I was still feeling pretty strong and just tried to concentrate on maintaining cadence, as I was finding that to be a pretty good way of maintaining speed. The third mile was done in 7:47, with the avg HR creeping up to 168. The fourth mile wasn't actually a mile, because I screwed up on my landmarks. It turned out to be more like 1.27 miles, and the time was 10:25 (giving me a pace of 8:13 for that mile, which had some grade to it) with a HR of 171. The next portion was 0.76 miles in 6:26, for a pace of 8:25 and a HR of 172 - a little disappointing since it included some downhill. The last mile was 8:23 with a HR of 174 - however this included some uphill.

Total Time: 48:52
Total Distance: 6 miles
Avg HR: 165

So the maintaining 8 min/miles for 6 miles still eludes me, but this weekend will be the first time I'll be doing any real speed work beyond the 5 mile distance - so I'm hoping that will translate to some improvement.

Actually, today was a pretty humid day, and I know I lost a lot of water. I also didn't bring any with me, as it was going to be a run < 1 hour in length. While in the past the hour time was a threshold of whether to bring water or not (because anything in the 45 minute range was usually a slower run) - I may be at the point where, in order to maintain peak performance for that distance, I need to bring some fluids with me.