I ran my long run this morning. I wanted to run a tempo of some sort since my knee was feeling a lot better than it was a couple of days ago, but I did not want to run hard up or down (especially down) any nasty hills, and in the direction I was going there were a few nasty nasty hills after about 7 miles (were talking worse than ragnar nasty, but at sea level and no more than a couple hundred meters long). So, I decided to split my tempo into two 5 mile tempo runs, hitting the first from 2-7 miles and the second in the same section of trail in reverse from 13-18 miles. Half mile splits were marked on the trail and are as follows: 3:00, 2:49, 2:45, 2:50, 2:48, 2:46, 2:45, 2:50, 2:57, 2:50 (28:20 total time for the first repeat). The first 3 miles were rolling, and the last two had more uphill in them, with the last mile run on gravel which slowed me down quite a bit. There was also a headwind that hit me in a couple of different spots on the trail, but did not slow me down too much. I hit approximately 10 miles in 1:04, and then started back for home. Splits for the second 5 mile tempo are as follows: 2:47, 2:50, 2:44, 2:42, 2:46, 2:49, 2:41, 2:41, 2:42, 2:39 (27:21 total time). As far as mile splits go, the first split of the second repeat was comparatively faster by 10 seconds than the corresponding mile split from the first repeat. The second mile was 9 seconds faster, the third was 1 second slower, the fourth 13 seconds faster, and the fifth was 28 seconds faster. I made it home in a total time of 2:03:45 for 20 miles. 59:45 for the last 10 miles. This was one of the fastest 20 mile runs that I have ever done, and I was glad that I was able to get out and run fast for a while. The effort did feel too hard at times, but I guess that is to be expected since my foot and knee have been bugging me recently, and I also have layed off of the speedwork and mileage recently due to these issues as well as getting the swine flu a little while back. So, overall I am happy with the run. | 