Up Tempo

I'm getting prepared to hit the gym soon and I'm going to try a new run. I'm going to try a tempo run, something I think can have some good benefits.

A tempo run means you sustain a greater pace for a few miles or minutes, whatever you want to use. So let's say you want to run a 4-mile tempo run. The first and last miles you'd run them at a slower pace, so like a 5.8 or so on the treadmill or like a conversational pace outdoors. Then for Miles 2 and 3, you would increase the tempo, so instea of 5.8 you go up to a 7.3 or something. As long as you increase the pace and hold it there for a couple of miles or maybe like 20 minutes or more, that's the key.

I am not looking forward to it though. That's fast for me, the 7.3, and I would rather just run 5 or 6 miles or an interval but I can't do the first and just did the second. So I have no choice.

I'm blogging about it so I have to see it through. Ugh.

I guess I'll be back later to report on my progress.

UPDATE:

What a great run! I would be lying if I said that I wasn't nervous about it and wasn't looking forward to it. I biked for six minutes before the run so I got my heart rate up a bit. I walked for about a minute on the treadmill before starting. I ran the first mile at a 5.8, which is a little slower than 10 minutes per mile. That's a comfortable speed for me; slow, steady, comfortable.

Then at exactly one mile, I jacked it up to 7.3, which is an 8:13 per mile pace. I suppose that would be my 10K pace, since that would be a 10K in under 50 minutes... well, then it would probably be faster than my 10K pace because I've not been able to run a 10K in under 50 minutes.

The first mile went by okay and the second mile was a little tougher but I didn't feel like I was going to hurl or anything at any point. I sort of wanted to keep going at the higher pace but I didn't want to get ahead of myself so I slowed back down to a 5.8 for the last mile, and that was pretty slow going there.

Overall, my time was a little more than 36 minutes for the entire four miles. I walked until I got to minute 40 as a cool down.

Next time - and there will be a next time - I think I'll run a little longer so the last mile won't be so long. I may try to keep the overall running time at 40 minutes so I may run like 2.25 or 2.5 miles at the higher pace. Gradually I'd like to increase that so I'm running three or maybe even four miles at that pace. I guess that's one way to make myself run a little faster, to run these tempo runs and force myself to run faster.

Whatever the case, I feel very good both because running usually makes me feel good and that I was able to accomplish something I felt was challenging. Maybe for Mr. Super Marathoner that's not an accomplishment but for me it is :)