tempo runs

This evening, I ran approx. 3.3 miles (guesstimated). Time: 34:41. When I was a little past a mile into the run, I did a full-power tempo for about maybe 30 to 40 seconds. Hard to tell the time w/out glasses on. So, I guessed that was how long it was. The rest of the run was about just doing the distance as consistent as possible with as few walk brakes as possible. I noticed that the total distance ran this week was 11.4 miles. Now, as I can see, that's the most I've done in a week in quite a while! Coool!!!! Countdown to the 10k --- T minus 8 days and counting!

So I took my Forerunner to the strand today to do a little tempo running. Since the Forerunner is still new to me, I'm still not all that familiar with the whole "lap" feature, but I eventually figured it out. I did a little over 5 miles which broke down like this:

1 11:15 warmup mile
2 8:24 tempo mile
3 10:24 recovery mile
4 8:19 tempo mile
5 10:14 recovery mile

I was really struggling in mile 4, unsure of whether I could maintain that pace. But I just kept repeating "Boston" to myself. My long term goal is Boston in 2010 and I need to average 8:35 a mile to qualify by then. I've never really worried about speed work, tempo work, etc. so I am pretty happy that my first tempo run went so well. I know the tempo run really needs to be strung together instead of broken up in intervals, but it's a start. Baby steps, right?