Tempo run + strides

Today I was unsure about doing my tempo run, even when I went out running, the plan was to run one lap at tempo effort, then one lap easy, repeat the process till 5-7 laps or so, but when I did my first lap easy that my tempo run started I decided to do a continous tempo run, felt good for the first couple of laps then got tired, by the end of the 3rd lap I was tired, I dont know if it was mental because I have been doing only 3k tempos. Decided to do 1 more lap at whatever pace following the same effort, of course when I got to the flat part I sped up a bit, but I was huffing and puffing too much, and wanted to keep myself under control.

So did 4k tempo, then did 1 lap easy, and then decided to do another lap doing 4 strides, then on the way home, in the last 500s decided to throw a couple of more strides, so it was a good day of training! 9.5k total in 54:58 and the run flew by mentally because I changed things up and dont followed the same pace for the whole run.

Splits were 7:59 to get to the park, then did 1 lap easy in 6:31, then 4 laps at tempo effort in 5:20,5:18,5:14,5:07, then 1 lap easy in 6:39, then 1 lap doing 4 strides in 5:24, I got surprised with that one because I almost equalled the tempo run pace and this lap doing strides felt easy, I just sped up for 100m, then jogged for another 100m before repeating the process once again, then I kept an easy pace till home, but moving the legs, since I wanted to make this day a quality day, in the last 500m as I said I threw I couple of 100m strides to total 6  x 100m strides to learn to run fast when tired and to practice my raw speed.

To be honest I thought that the tempo effort was faster today, but at the end of the day a tempo is a pace confortably hard and the pace for last week was faster than I should, so today it was more accurate, but I find that I finish the tempo effort more tired than I should given the slower pace, no biggies, thats what my body had for today and I felt really good at the end, very strong.

Note: I did not look at the watch during the run, I just run by effort, and look at the watch post run when I am at home, I am getting into the habit in doing that because following a precise pace for a tempo run its not optimal, you should run tempos off effort and easy runs for that matter!

It was a very productive weekend, a couple of 9.5k runs and one of them with quality thrown in! tomorrow its going to be very easy.

Have a great rest of Sunday!