return on investment

eight miles on the schedule last night. simple eight. with instructions to hit the last mile a little harder. no problem, that's typically how i do my runs anyway. last week's eight mile, tempo effort run really required me to push hard, so this week, i figured i'd just coast at around an eight minute pace until the turn around and then start to drop the hammer.

a great idea if i had the juice to pull it off. i'm looking back at the previous week, how much sleep i've been getting and how i felt before starting out yesterday. tired, a little groggy from too much food at lunch and it was warm out. still, by the time i got started, i was feeling pretty good through the first couple miles. i hit the turn around a minute under an eight minute pace. a little quick, maybe, but nowhere as fast as last tuesday's eight.

the problem was, i was already feeling the pace and i could tell that picking it up at the end was going to be a challenge. for some reason, my brain faded and i thought that it was the last two miles that needed to be quicker, so at mile seven, i started stepping up the pace. it was HARD to even get the pace to match what i'd done last week. it felt harder than tempo effort. my lungs were on fire, the legs felt like they had bricks and i looked like i'd just climbed out of the shower.

the finishing mile has a .3 mile steep hill, which always kills the pace of the run. but, despite feeling like i was going to fall apart any second, i pushed up the big hill and pulled off a finishing mile of 7:45. i was faint, chilled and somewhat nauseated when i came to a stop. it was hard. mile 24 hard. my ears felt like they needed to pop, and my right one hurt for a while afterward.

i rehydrated, cooled down, stretched and then headed inside to get something in my stomach. overall pace for the 8.1 was 7:44, compared to last tuesday's 7:17. what happened? did i wake up slower? did someone steal my mojo? that harder effort should have returned a much faster, overall time!

actually, i attribute much of it to stuffing myself too much at lunch and not having enough sleep the past few days. i'm focused on picking up at least eight hours a night, and if i can watch the fuel intake, we'll see if that brings back the ability to hit previous paces.