8k tempo run

Yesterday was my day off and it paid off, because on Wednesday I was very tired, but today I woke up very fresh and ready for my tempo run.

For today I had planned a 8k tempo run, I have been doing 5-6ks tempos for a while so I wanted to ram up things a bit and do 8k tempos, I was aiming for 40 mins or less, a bit slower than my 6k tempos, but as I never do 8k tempos, I was somewhat afraid of the distance, but once I do them several times it will become much easier mentally and when I go down again to 5-6ks tempo, I will be able to do them much faster, because it will seem shorter in comparition.

I met my brother at 6 p.m. and it was pouring rain, but I was not going to miss this tempo for the world, I could sacrifice an easy day, but not a workout, so this workout had to be done no matter what!

I warmed up my usual 15 mins including 5 x 50m strides, but slower than most days since it was very wet and there were paddles everywhere. I wanted to go out at 5 mins or a bit slower and ease into the pace.

Splits per km for the 8k were: 5:00, 5:03 (10:03), 5:00 (15:03), 4:55 (19:58 halfway), 4:53 (24:51), 5:01 (29:52), 4:50 (34:42), 4:46 to finish in 39:28 for the 8k. Negative Split by 30 seconds, so I did 19:30 for the second half. Solid!

I was very surprised with how I executed this run, I thought that I was going to suffer, but honestly I felt very strong throughout. Between kms 3 and 5 The Turia Park has a lot of rolling hills, but I really felt very strong in that segment and the kms splits for those 2 kms were very fast, on the 6th km though I felt the legs very heavy and thought that I hit the wall because that I was one of my slowest splits of the day and felt tired, but suddenly I started to feel loose again and could run the fastest 2k of the day in the final 2. When I was approaching the finish I just pumped my fist and hi 5 my brother and was very happy. I thought that it would not be possible to get back to this shape when I found myself with 200 pounds and only jogging around, I thought that my days were gone, but when you train consistently and do hard workouts and do the training, amazing things can happen.

After the 8k, I walked a 1 min or so and then started my 13:25 cool down, around 1.7k, so I did around 12k for the day. Felt pretty strong!

My brother is racing a 10k race tomorrow and I will be supporting him, I hope that today`s workout inspire him to run well, I think He is capable of running sub 50 mins. As my brother is not doing a long run this weekend, I ll just run easy 45 mins to recover and I will do my long run on Sunday in the Harbor, if I feel ok on Sunday I will run the last 30 mins of the long run faster, if I feel too tired from today`s workout I ll just run easy, either way, it will work!

Have a great Friday!