pacing

Two days ago, on Thursday, I ran with Otley AC for the first time since ... last August probably.  It's been a long time and there was a few new faces but it was good to be back with old friends.

The following day I decided to run 3.2 km at tempo pace.  Not knowing what that would be at the moment I looked at all my race times over the past twelve months and putting the figures into various online forms such as this one from Runner's World I came up with 4:18 to 4:21 per km.

I haven't done any type of paced running in 10 months so I didn't know what 4:20 per km feels like.  I did know that I could adjust my pace as necessary every kilometre and that wouldn't be too bad.  Also, I vaguely remembered how my body felt running at tempo pace (breathing, tiredness, etc) so that's what I aimed for.

The first k passed in an amazing 3:59.  Couldn't believe that, I then expected to blow up or not even complete the whole distance.  So, I slowed down a bit and the second k took 4:04.  Something wasn't right, I thought, I shouldn't be feeling so good running so quickly ... I'm not fit enough for this.  Slowing down even more, the third kilometre took 4:12 and the final 200m took 50s.

So my overall target was to run 3.2 km between 13:51 and 14:00.  I managed 13:09 and felt OK doing so.  Next time I think I'll have to up the distance to 4k perhaps (or maybe more).  And the temperature at the local weather station was over 26 degrees C whilst I was out running.

Pleased with how this week has gone.

Other pace calculators can be found at Running for Fitness, HillRunner.com, Runworks, Attackpoint, Santa Clarita Runners and many others.  Almost all of them are based Jack Daniels Running Formula and the idea of the vdot.