Tough speed-work tonight...

Coach Brian felt that rather than doing "traditional" speed work, I should get a semi-long tempo style run in. So the goal for tonight was 21 kilometres, with the first half at an easy run pace, and the second half at race pace. I'd played hockey last night, but the legs felt strong even still.

For the first half -- the easy run part -- it took a long while to get into the rhythm. I was targeting 30 seconds/k slower than race pace, so 5:22/k. Here are my splits:

5:18
5:18
5:16
5:20
5:21
5:20
5:14
5:18
5:19
5:18
5:03 pace (500 m.)

Then I ramped up the pace to get to race pace (4:52/km.). Here were my splits:

4:51
4:52
4:54
4:54
4:54
4:51 pace (500 m.)

By the time I'd done 5 km at race pace, I could tell I was starting to overheat. The temperature when I'd left home was 24 degrees C. (75 F.) but the sun was shining, so it definitely felt in the 80's. Jenny came by to see how I was doing, and then came by again to get me some water. But I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to last the full 10.5k of race pace. It didn't help that it was a slight uphill grade for those 5k. Anyhow, enough excuses -- the fact is that I bailed. So we'll try again another day.