It’s all about tempo

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March 14, 2014 by Amy B

Since the back-wrecking on Sunday at the hockey game, I’ve been doing okay, though it was really bothering me yesterday at the time I had planned on runching. Sometimes plans need to change.

The schedule said to do a 30-min tempo. I haven’t really done a tempo run yet (IN MY LIFE) so I guessed on which heart rate zones I should be in for 10Kish race pace and set up a workout on my Garmin. I do love this workout thing.

This was mostly a success, though the warm-up/recovery zones of 119-130 are pretty low for me and I couldn’t stay in them without running around a 12:00/mi pace, which is kind of slow for a warm-up (at least for me). After giving it a shot for a few minutes, I just decided to finish the 0.5 mi at what I perceive as an easy pace; I ended up averaging 10:47.

Those middle “tempo” miles were interesting, i.e., they were okay in the beginning and then toward the end it took about everything within me to push the idea of OMG NEVER GOING TO MAKE IT out of my brain. HR sustained for most of it was right at 150, which is pretty close to CURL UP IN A BALL AND DIE territory for me. In fact, 144-157 is not a place I live very often, at least for sure when I’m just out running lah-di-dah.

It didn’t kill me, but it felt pretty awful, and at this point, after logging some pretty decent short workouts indoors over the winter, I thought a 9:11 avg pace for one mile wouldn’t feel that awful. It shouldn’t feel that awful. It left me totally doubting this sub-2:00 half goal of mine, especially since I’d have to sustain a fast pace than this for 13.1 miles.

I’ve never really trained for a half before. In the beginning of full training, I always feel inadequate and find it hard to believe that the training will work. I forget about the taper and the adrenaline and all the other magical aspects of race day. I really hope these rules apply to half maras, too. Right now I feel like I could barely finish the distance – forget any time goals.