Tempo - 10 miles with 8 @ 7:26/mi

Tempo - AM 10 miles with 8 at 7:26/mile, PM 5 miles TM with 4 @ 7:00/mi

Good tempo run today. I weighed my pack with 500cc of water in it as well as the light battery, and it weighs a full 5 pounds! That's definitely why running fast has felt so difficult as of late - with 2sec/pound of slowdown, I'm running 10sec/mile faster than my packless pace.

With this recalibrated expectation, I'm happy with my 7:26/mile pace, which is closer to a 7:16/mi pace without the pack. Given the additional 1.5 pounds of winter clothing (weight when sweaty), and it's probably about a 7:14-15 pace, which is exactly where I want to be for a 3:10 marathon pace. (My A goal is still 3:15, but I'm using the faster pace based on my Thanksgiving 18:57 5k for a buffer.)

The HRM data today got all screwed up unfortunately - have to cinch it down tighter for sure, but when it worked I was running the whole thing at 145-152, with 150+ after mile 2 of the tempo. Felt like a hard upper aerobic effort rather than tapping into my anaerobic reserves, so I think I'm improving. 1 mile warmup, 8 tempo, 1 cooldown.

The legs felt tired during the tempo miles and were actually limiting me by the end of the tempo miles, but once I did my recovery mile, they felt good again - could have done more easy miles but didn't have time this AM.

37F out at 5AM.

PM: PM 5 miles TM with 4 @ 7:00/mi, last 8:30/mi

Got motivated on my lunch run and threw down 4 miles @ 7:00/mi pace on the treadmill. Weirdly, my legs felt fine (as opposed to this AM where the legs were limiting) but my HR started getting really high even though I wasn't huffing at all. Probably fatigue/dehydration, as last week I barely hit 150HR for 7:00/mi pace, whereas today the 4 miles were 150-160HR. Last mile at 8:30/mi HR 145.

A big change from the initial buildup weeks where I'd be deathmarching these miles after the AM tempo run.