Progressive Tempo Run

I started off this hot, humid morning just to run for 40 minutes or so. And to throw in something tough to the run, but tough is relative to how I feel on a given day, so I wasn't sure what, yet.

I'm not following the WFit Yellow Marathon schedule exactly, but I'm not running a marathon, so I figure it is ok. The schedule called for a 50 minute hill run. I figured 40 minutes with "something hard" would be sufficient.

So I ran my first mile slow, as usual in this weather. 11-something. But I felt pretty good, like I could go faster, and I had this brilliant idea for a progressive tempo run. Last week when I tried for a straight-up tempo run, I was toast after 1 mile at tempo, so I thought this might be a better way to go a little faster for a little longer. So at 1 mile, I upped the tempo with the goal of making mile 2 10-something. Success! Then upped the goal to 9-something for mile 3. Again, success! Then I just ran as hard as I could for the last half mile, but I was pretty toasty by then, so I reckon it was still 9-something average, though I did make a nice low 8-something for the final sprint.

All in all, I ran the exact same 3.5ish mile route as yesterday about 5 minutes faster than yesterday. Pretty satisfying.

But then I had 5 minutes to go before I got in my self-prescribed 40 minutes, so I did some drills.

Now my legs are so fried that I could hardly make it up the stairs at work, but that's actually pretty cool, you know?