12 miles with 20 tempo minutes

Another encouraging one today. I was slated to do an 80 minute run with 20 minutes in the middle at HR zone 3, which comes out to 159-167 bpm. Otherwise known as tempo pace, ideally I'm looking for a uncomfortably maintainable speed where I'm breathing hard but feel like I could keep it up for a long time. It's a speed and effort level I've always enjoyed implementing into my workouts. Pushing that threshold has always been fun and more exciting than long, slow distance runs. For reference, in case you were curious, my marathon heart rate average at Grandma's was 167 over the whole thing.

So I headed off along 1A, mostly because I wanted to hit the paces and be consistent with my heart rate. I warmed up for five miles (about 34-35 minutes) and got right into it. I sped up and kicked it to 5:50-6:10 pace, keeping my HR typically between 163-167, depending on the terrain, which had just a few little bumps once I turned back inland about 2 miles into it. Physically, I was really happy with how my right hip felt. It was the best I've felt on that side in months-- the first time in a long while where I wasn't obsessing about it the whole time. Well, I did feel good on the trails a couple weeks ago, but this was definitely the first time on road run where I've felt this confident. I covered almost 12 miles total on this run, so it averaged out to 6:44 pace.

In an interesting shift, my main focus for pain was right in the middle of my groin, seemingly near the top of, ahem, my pubic bone. It was an interesting pain, mostly an ache sort of thing. Nothing sharp or alarming the way my sides have felt in the past. The fact that my right side didn't bother me was enough to make me feel amazing. Like I've said in previous mini breakthroughs over the last 3 months, any shift or change in the location of the pain is encouraging and something to celebrate.

The week ahead is looking nice and heavy, at least compared to my last couple weeks. I've got a 2 hour run in the trails on Saturday with some moderate distance trail/road runs in the meantime. I still have plenty of drills and core work sprinkled in there as well. I'm feeling great at the moment though. I hope things stay the course!

AH