Night time tempo run ...

Thursday - 3 miles

• 3.67 miles, 40' 07" minutes, 10' 55" min/mile average pace, 159 BPM average heart rate

When I didn't wake up early enough to run before work, I decided to take Jeff Galloway's advice and run at 10 pm. It totally threw my schedule off though because I usually like to be in bed by 10 pm so I can wake up early enough to work out. Tonight instead of changing into my pajamas and climbing into bed, I doned my running clothes and climbed onto the treadmill. When I first decided to run at night, one of my concerns was how my stomach would handle it after a day of eating. I also wanted to make sure that I pushed myself without going too far.

Let me just say that I felt great after my run tonight. I got my heart rate up to 172 BPM at its max, which is on the low side of my threshold zone. I could have probably pushed myself a little bit more but I found a new max pace that I am comfortable with. After my five minute walking warm up, I set the belt pace to 4.0 mph, which is where my comfort zone has been. I held that pace for five minutes before I started to slowly increase the belt speed. Before I started running tonight, I actually set a goal for my max pace to be 5.0 mph. I spent 10 minutes increasing the belt pace from 4.0 to 5.0 mph in order to allow my body to adjust to running at the faster speed. Once I reached my max pace goal, I maintained it for 20 minutes and I actually felt like I could continue at that pace. I chose not to though because I had finished my scheduled mileage and I didn't want to push myself too much. I spent 5 minutes slowly bringing the belt pace back down from 5.0 to 4.0 mph before I started my 10 minute walking cool down.

My run tonight went really well. I pushed myself to a faster belt pace, which was very empowering. Throughout my run, I controlled my breathing and never felt out of breath or overexerted. Hopefully, this will translate into my 8 mile long run on Saturday morning. My big concern is that the weather has been so hot recently that I may get overheated. What really sucks about this heat is that by 9 am when I leave for work it is already so hot that I work up a sweat just walking to my car. I am going to have to wake up extra early to try to beat the heat.