I ran 10 miles this morning in 1:14:31. The first 1.5 miles were barefoot, and the rest wearing shoes. At the end of the run I ran the final 2 miles hard (measurement is approximate). I was lucky in that I did not have to stop at any stoplights during those 2 miles. According to the course tool I started the 2 mile tempo at 903 ft elevation, I hit 1 mile at 950 ft, and ended at 945 ft. This would lead me to believe that the first mile is slower than the second. However, I ended up running the first mile in 5:44, and the second in 5:48. Both miles have 6 turns in them, but the turns in the second mile are much sharper than those in the first making it slower than you would guess. The second mile also rolls quite a bit slowing it down even more. The first mile, while gaining 47 feet does have one stretch with a decent downhill in it, but otherwise climbs fairly consistently. I had a hard time getting my legs to really move in the second mile, maybe due to all the uphill in the first mile and the turns? According to the temperature I looked at online it was 75 degrees at the start of my run and 84 degrees at the finish. My initial impression is that the heat did not affect me much. I will need to think a bit more about that 2 mile tempo before I can really make any conclusions from it. Update: I ended up mapping the last 2 miles of my run on the course tool (I did it twice because the first time there was an error and it wiped out the whole thing). Both times I mapped it out the distance counter showed 2.00 miles prior to hitting the Save button (it says 1.9922 when I press analyze... grrr) so I am pretty happy with myself and my ability to guess how far 2 miles was without any trail markers for guidance (There was a small section in the trees that I could not map as accurately as I wanted, but I was still able to follow the 'road' from the road overlay on the satellite image). What does appear to be a little off is my estimated mile marker, explaining most of the discrepancy in split times (splits should probably be right around 5:45 and 5:47, or maybe both at 5:46). The course tool says that the course is worth about .1 miles more than the actual distance due to the elevation change. Knowing this brings things into focus for me a bit more. It appears that I am a poor uphill runner currently, and after running uphill I seem to have trouble changing gears to get moving again (I could feel that problem during the second mile of the tempo run today). Maybe I should start to focus on improving my uphill running ability. I might start by running uphill strides and then work my way up to running shorter repeats up the massive hill near the 1 mile mark of the tempo. | 