Road workouts

I got back to Washington a little before 6 am Tuesday and headed right for the office. Why not? With three hours to go until people showed up in government offices and I could start working, I went for a 10 mile run around the Mall and Hains point, averaging 6:54 pace. Not bad. Had I tried to run after work, it would have been a disaster. I like the feeling of running before work. If I could just manage to wake up in time...

Wednesday I went up to Bethesda to do a short five-mile run and some drills while the other GRC guys did a workout. I could only find two hurdles, so my HMDs were truncated.

Thursday I got a bit inventive- planning for a two-mile warmup, a four mile tempo at about 6:00 pace, then 8x800 around the Greenwich Mile loop. As is my style, I went way too fast on the tempo, averaging 5:45, and by the time I got to the loop for my 800s, my digestive system was a mess. I managed four 800s, around 5:15 pace, then called it a day.

Friday afternoon I did an easyish seven rolling miles around McLean. Saturday I did an easy 5.5 with Jake, Wiggy, Dylan some others from the Chevy Chase store.

I was planning to do the Vienna 5k Sunday morning, to get in a race environment and trash some people and give myself some confidence after finishing pretty far back in every race I've done this year. I got up at 6 to get ready to bike the five miles to the race and noticed the significant rain. Considering how tired I was, I figured I was better off getting more sleep and doing a workout in the afternoon. I was happy with that, and the 5k winner ended up running 18:20. I waited until 6 and headed out to the Venice loop to do a 5k time trial. It was about 78 degrees and miserably humid, but I managed to do pretty well- 16:08. I wasn't exactly sure of the mile marks after the first beyond the basic location between intersections, but I had 4;58, 5:03 and 5:33 (yeeesh) and 33. The loop pretty much had two hills repeated three times, and I was definitely feeling myself lose focus in the third mile, I just didn't think the dropoff would be so dramatic. On my cooldown, I hit a breeze that would have made the workout a lot easier.

I'll take the next week easy- down to 55 miles and only one fast run- 5xmile at 5:25 on Wednesday morning, just to remind myself what it feels like to run my goal pace.