Turn him loose

You can scroll down two blog entries to read the exact details of today's 2 x 2 mile tempo run along Back Bay Road. Today we had a five person crew rolling strong in the morning fog. I left the house around 6:10 and managed to get about a 2.5 mile warm-up in before we rolled into the first rep. Definitely need the extra warm-up time to deal with my Rubios burrito from last night, but such is life, and no real issues arose during the workout. Kaz was a little tired so we didn't take it out as hard, but I led us through in 5:42/5:35, good for an 11:17 first 2 miles. I was feeling very springy on the first rep, and it looked like the crew was going to struggle to keep pace on the second rep, so I decided to have a little fun with it.

During our 5 minute recovery between the reps, I told the group I was planning on taking them through the first mile on pace, the winding it up a bit for a controlled second mile. I led us through mile 1 in a perfectly paced 5:40, then immediately upped my turnover into the last mile. Once I hit a comfortable pace just below threshold, I locked in and tried to relax my body as much as possible. I ended up dropping the last mile down to a steady 5:05, good for 10:45 for my second rep, quite an encouraging workout ahead of the Allianz Games next week. I took an easy 2 mile jog back to my house, good for about 9 miles on the day, and headed off to a nice day at work.