Total time of 50:03 for approximately 7.4 miles.
TLDR: I ran a 25 minute tempo from 20-45 minutes.
Full version: I again didn't really plan a workout for today. As I was about to walk out the door I jokingly asked my wife: "What should I do for a workout today?" Her response: "Nothing too hard". So, her advice turned into a moderately hard tempo run of 25 minutes. My goal was to not work so hard that I was super fatigued for the rest of the day. I decided to start the tempo at the 20 minute mark of the run and then turn around at 26 minutes, giving myself 24 minutes to make it back home. Normally I would be a little concerned about making it back 2 minutes faster since the return trip has a net uphill of approximately 180 ft based on where I turned around. Today I wasn't concerned about that since 19 minutes of the tempo would be after I turned around.
It is normal for me to get excited before speed workouts and run the easy part of the run faster than normal. Today was no different as I averaged 7:30 pace from my house to a power pole that I pass 1.06 miles into the run (normally on an easy run I guess that I will average about 7:45 pace). I was conciously trying not to speed up, but I still maintained about 7:30 pace until the 20 minute mark when I started my tempo.
At the start of the tempo I was at the bottom of a hill that I had just run down, and I gained a little over 30 ft elevation while running into a headwind during the first minute of the tempo. I then turned on Highland Blvd and started to head downhill (losing approx 109 ft elevation) with a tailwind for the next 5+ minutes until I turned around at 26:00 (approx. 1.03 miles into the tempo). I then turned around and ran back the way I came, running uphill into a headwind. It was no surprise that I ran back up the hill 51 seconds slower than I ran down it, cresting the hill to turn off Highland Blvd at 31:55. I was now worried that I would not make it back to the house by 50:00 because I lost so much time running into the wind. Thankfully, over the last 13 minutes of the tempo I had less headwind, and more tailwind. For the next 4:25 (until 36:20) after turning off Highland Blvd (approx 0.75 miles). I was running a net downhill (losing almost 60 ft), but with one uphill segment thrown in as well that lasted for about 1:30. The next 7:20 was almost purely uphill (approx 43:40 into the run), followed by a short downhill segment for 20ish seconds and a mostly flat last minute. I then finished running the last 0.70 miles back to the house, arriving at 50:03. I ran a little faster back to the house than I would have normally run because I wanted to make it back in close to 50:00.
All told, I ran about 4.03 miles for the tempo (approx 6:12 pace), with 3 miles coming during the 19 minutes after I turned around, while gaining approx. 100 ft net elevation after the turn around. For the entire tempo I only gained a little over 20 ft elevation, so not a big change there, but there were lots of hills throughout the tempo (plus some wind), so I was actually pleased with how things went even though the average pace was not very fast. It was also nice to not feel like I was straining very hard to run this pace as there have been some workouts in the past few months that have been around this same pace where I have felt like I was really straining.
My next order of business is to improve my top end speed for distances 400m-1 mile. I feel like if I am going to try and run tempos like this in the 5:00-5:30 pace range at some point in the future that I need to get my top end speed a little faster. I just need to follow through on actually doing the workouts in the near future.
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