Did We Do It?

I've had two good weekends of speed work that have helped to boost my confidence in running in general and, in some ways, bring a little joy back to it (probably because of feeling like I can still accomplish maybe something big). Last week I held onto 3x1.5 miles despite having a tummy and head that didn't like me. I think that run and my following long run may have messed up my system a bit, because I did not feel great on Tuesday, but by Wednesday seemed okay. What that meant or means though was five days in a row of running if I wanted to be close to my training plan.

I dialed back some of the easy run distances, because of time and energy, but have so far held on to keeping most mileage. Today I did a progressive HMP workout starting at 10 second more than HMP, HMP and then 10 second faster than HMP. For me I put my goals at 7:50, 7:40 and 7:30. I tend to talk myself out of progressive runnings claiming "I'm not good at them" in terms of managing the speed increases and steady-state, but today I tried really hard not to follow that narrative.

My splits were: 7:52, 7:52, 7:36, 7:41, 7:33, 7:32 so turns out I can manage my paces if I focus. I think some of that is having had a coach for almost while and having better management of prescribed paces in workouts. I felt overall pretty good during this run. By the end, I was glad to be done and I'm not sure a 7:30 half marathon pace is there for me which was also a far reaching goal, but there is a little excitement there about what I could maybe pull off. I'd LOVE a 1:39:59 and losing the "4" before my half marathon pace, but I think that's still a stretch. For now, I'm thinking between a 1:40-1:45 but closer to the 1:45. You never know and we'll see how I feel, how the weather is and what the course shapes up to be, but there is that lilt trickle of "hmm maybe I can pull something off".