Tempo

Back out to Dangan where the track is for a tempo session. We were to use the surrounding sports fields for a session of 15 mins, 10 mins, 5 mins of tempo with 3 minutes recovery in between.

After a 20 minute warm-up the session was underway. Today it was packed full of good runners - probably 10 runners who can rub sub 35 for 10km. If only they would all turn up to race...

Anyway, the lap we were running was approx 1.25km. When I've done a similar session before I knew that 4:30 per lap was a good pace. Well the first lap passed in 4:11 and I knew I'd gone too hard. I kept running the first 15 minute effort and each subsequent lap was a little slower. The weather was fairly brutal - bitterly cold, and the wind and rain picked up throughout the session to really test your resolve.

So about 3.5 laps for the first 15 minutes. 2 and a bit laps for the 10 minute effort. And 1 and a smaller bit for the last 5 minutes. The pace I ran was fairly consistent if you ignore the first lap (say 4:20 per lap so just under 3:30 per km pace). Ideally it would have been better to pick up the pace throughout the session.

I finished up with a good 20 minute warm-down. All up I estimate 17.7km for the session.