Rainy 8k tempo run

Yesterday was my day off. I was really tired on Wednesday and I was not sure that I was going to be fully recovered for today, but I was doing my tempo run anyway, luckily, I felt pretty good when I woke up. That rest day always help a lot.

For today and the whole way in the forecast is rain and more rain, so I was not so sure if I would be able to do my 8k tempo run, since it was going to rain the whole day and I did not want to risk anything, I even thought about taking the day the day off and run the tempo in the morning, because tomorrow morning the likely of rain is 50%, so much better than today. However, I stayed at home yesterday and I was sick of being inside, needed my running fix, needed to be outside, no matter if its was raining.

I decided to get my 8k tempo done no matter what, I warmed up from home today since it was not logical to walk to the park under the rain and start running there, instead, I warmed up from home to the Turia park at 4:50 p.m., Warmed up 15 mins including 4 x 50m controlled strides to get the legs moving, but too much paddles so they were pretty controlled. I wore my windbreaker because of the rain, but I was sweating a lot before starting, but that really helped with the strong wind.

The tempo started, 1st 200s in 59 seconds, right where I wanted to be , first 3k were conservative and played it by feel, like my last 8k tempo, I ran conservatively till the 2 mile mark, then started to open up, and as I had completed the 8k tempo 2 weeks ago, I was much more confident, because I know that I can complete it, when I hit the halfway point, I was feeling pretty good, too good to be true, so I decided to progressively increase the pace while keeping it relaxed, even in the last km I realized that I could run sub 39 mins, so I pushed while maintaining good form and in the last 200s pushed, but without sprinting, finished the 8k tempo in 38:49. Much better than expected and the conditions were very rainy, but I think that they pretty good to run fast. I felt very happy when I finished, I crushed my time from 2 weeks ago.

Splits per km were: 4:59,5:02 (10:01),5:02 (15:03), 4:56 (19:59), 4:51 (24:50), 4:48 (29:38), 4:43 (34:21), 4:28 to finish in 38:46. Negative split 70 seconds, so 19:59/18:50, I felt so good in the first half that I had a lot left in the tank and decided to push it a bit in the second half. Last 5 kms were in 23:46, this is the first time that I run sub 24 mins in training in the last 7 years. Last 3k were in 13:59, so I think the same applies, cant remember the last time I ran sub 14 mins in the 3k in training, maybe in 2011.

Its incredibly how "easy" those 3k felt, given that I had never run that fast in any of my tempos, let alone to get the last one in 4:28 (roughly 5k race pace) is surprising. The weather was great maybe, or last week race really opened my system, or a combination of all! Who knows! maybe the training is working!

I am happy with how far I have gotten after I lost all the extra weight, I thought that I would never get back to sub 23 mins 5k and sub 50 mins in the 10k, ( I had yet to do so since I had to run 2 more kms today to hit 48:30 for the 10k).

I cooled down to home today, the same as my warm up, around 15 mins easy warm down. Around 12.6k total and one of my best tempos ever (if not the best). All of that in a awful rainy day, and I almost skip the day.