still struggling

...but feeling 2% better about it.

opted to once again not do a hill workout this morning and stayed with the planned tempo. i know i should really throw in some hill workouts but i've been mentally wussing out. next week, perhaps? if i can recover from the 20miler on sunday anyway.

i decided to do a 2 mile warm up, 4 mile tempo run, and 2 mile cool down to get in my 8 miles for the day. in the midst of the tempo miles i decided to do 5 instead, why not. my times weren't as good as they have been in the past and it was probably more of a marathon-pace run than a tempo run, but at least i pushed the pace a little.

mile 1 - 10:13, 137 *trust me i was disappointed too but whatever, warm up
mile 2 - 9:28, 149
mile 3 - 7:59, 166 *7:59.2
mile 4 - 7:59, 166 *7:59.3, since when am i consistent?
mile 5 - 8:23, 171 *andd back to crap
mile 6 - 7:44, 178
mile 7 - 8:26, 177
mile 8 - 8:38, 167 *might as well count this as another 'tempo' mile, but i'm not

i realized yesterday/this morning while running that i was probably aiming for too fast of paces in my previous 'tempo' runs. most things i've read about tempo workouts say to run them at around 10-20 seconds slower than 10k pace, which for me would be about a 7:36-7:46 mile. today i was aiming for 7:40-7:45 but as you can see i didn't do too great a job at hitting that at all.

i won't lie - i'm looking forward to resting my legs tomorrow, mostly so that they will hopefully be completely over whatever has gotten into them and quit making me feel 'off' (and to be ready to go for saturday/sunday's 10/20 mile runs).

am run: 8 miles, 1:08:51 (8:36 avg pace), avg/max hr (163/185)