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June 22, 2004

Tempo run

Hal Higdon suggests in his intermediate half marathon training writeup that once a week you do a tempo run. "This is a continuous run with a buildup in the middle to near 10-K race pace."

My first tempo run was today, doing 10k in 41:56 with splits as follows:

  1. 11:09 at 2.5k
  2. 20:57 at 5k
  3. 31:25 at 7.5k
  4. 41:56 at 10k

I found it difficult to build up gradually. It felt like I was flying along from about 4-5k. Then I had to force myself just to run hard to about 6k and sprint about a half kilometer beyond that. As soon as I slowed down after the sprint, by legs felt very heavy. Slowing down was almost more painful than running hard at that point. After what seemed like jogging back, I had enough at the end, however, to sprint like somebody who hadn't just run 10k. I usually don't have near that much left.

Posted by Mark at June 22, 2004 09:39 PM