Best. Tempo. Run. Ever.

So I have to say that I was less than enthused about today's workout.  I did a bunch of errands and had to run all over town, which I find tiring (to give you a sense, I spent about an hour and a half driving....we do not kid about the urban sprawl around these parts).  Also, my stomach was kind of upset.  But today was tempo run day, and I know that tempo runs are important, so I dragged myself onto the treadmill.

A tempo run is a term that evidently draws numerous different definitions.  I am using the one that Hal Higdon provides as part of the training program that I am broadly following:

This is a continuous run with a buildup in the middle to near 10-K race pace. A Tempo Run of 40 to 60 minutes would begin with 10-20 minutes easy running, build for 20-30 minutes near the middle, then 5-10 minutes easy toward the end. The pace buildup should be gradual, not sudden, with peak speed coming about two-thirds into the workout. Hold that peak only for a minute or two. I consider Tempo Runs to be the "Thinking Runner's Workout." A Tempo Run can be as hard or easy as you want to make it, and it has nothing to do with how long (in time) you run or how far. In fact, the times prescribed for Tempo Runs serve mainly as rough guidelines. Feel free to improvise. Improvisation is the heart of doing a Tempo Run correctly.

My basic approach has been to do a 10-minute warm-up, then divide up the tempo run into whatever interval is an even amount of 5 units, then a 10-minute cool-down.  I have been doing these on the treadmill, which makes it really easy to pace what you are doing, but really hard to cheat your speed.  Also, the weather has been very thunderstormy as of late, so the treadmill is probably the better choice anyway.

Today, I got on the treadmill to do a 40-minute run, even though I was really not enthusiastic about things.  I have been starting relatively slowly although for the past two weeks (since I started this plan), I have still not been able to get through the whole workout.  A walk break was required in the middle of the running fast section.  I would like to note, though, that I usually plan for a walk break at some point on the treadmill because otherwise I tend to overheat.  For the tempo runs, I have been limiting these considerably, but still had to take breaks.

Today, I got through my 10-minute warm-up, then concentrated really hard and got through the building up/building down section.  But I did it!  Two minutes of increasing increments for 10 minutes, then 10 minutes of decreasing increments.  And I made it all the way through!  But that was my limit.  I couldn't handle the cool-down.  I walked for a bit, then decided to stop.

So you can imagine my surprise when I looked again at the training plan and learned that today's tempo run was only supposed to be 30 minutes.  Which means I totally rocked it.  And then some.  Best tempo run ever!