Wind Chillin'

It wasn’t that cold when I headed out at 5:20 this morning but the wind took me back to January in my mind. Last night I thought about a route for today and memorized the mile splits, with the idea that I’d do 4 tempo miles between a warmup and cooldown.

After some strides and stretching I leaned into the wind for a 2 mile easy jog. This went by in 17:23, largely uphill and with a headwind, and judging by this time I knew that it’d be a challenge to up the pace. Spring Garden is not a serious hill headed west, but it’s long and steady and coupled with the wind it proved to be more of an obstacle than expected.

First tempo split is 7:03, and I’m still headed uphill, still accelerating. Maybe it’s because I haven’t done an official tempo run for a while, but the image of a newborn fawn comes to mind here, teetering for the first few upright moments but finally gaining control. Once the hill rounds out around 20^th street it’s a different story. Now I’m going down, steadily, and I loop around Eakin’s Oval and the second split is 6:31. Splits three and four are 6:36 and 6:28. By the end I’m breathing heavy and I knew if the wind wasn’t to my back these splits would be closer to 6:40. Jog the last mile back home for a total of 7 miles in 51:55.

I've been running without the Garmin pace display, and this is the 2^nd run of late that I focused on hitting mile split goals, and it’s telling that these splits have been a bit inconsistent. The idea is to improve my perception of effort, which will likely take some practice. Though today’s effort was slightly quicker than I’d anticipated, I always felt in control, and I also have the wind to blame, this time for making me faster. Some great pseudo-yoga stretching afterwards leaves me only moderately stiff.

[3 x 20 pushups, 3 x 15 “donkey kicks,” 3 x 20 situps, 3 x 15 lateral leg lifts, various stretches]