Vacation and Tempo Run

So.

I've been away with my family since Saturday morning (and when I say morning, I mean 4:30 AM). We spent some time at the resort of Mont Tremblant thanks to some friends who have access to a family condo there and we had a wonderful time (side note, four kids 4 and under are a LOT to manage!). While I had all kinds of notions of running while staying at Tremblant (especially as I was not going to ski), I didn't get out once. I'm sure everyone will agree that family time trumps running, even when you are training for a big race.

On a positive note, we stopped in Kanata for the night at my husband's sister's place so I was able to get out for the Sunday LSD run with the Kanata Running Room. While their half marathon group was only going 7k (I should have ran 9k), they had already broken up into pace groups, so I just had to follow my appropriate pace leader, which was easy to do as he had a NYC Marathon jacket on. We did 7k in about 51 minutes and this group employed the 10 and 1 training method that the Running Room favours.

I didn't like it. Not at all. I felt that as soon as I got into a good grove, we were walking. No matter, my usual group does not use this method (shh, don't tell John Stanton), so I'll be back to the normal way of running that I'm comfortable with this Sunday.

Today (Friday), I ignored the "rest" day scheduled in my training (as I had rested from Monday-Thursday) and did my first ever Tempo paced run (my group did two of these this week, Tuesday and Wednesday). I did it at the gym, on the treadmill and call me crazy, but I LOVED it.

I loved increasing the speed and pushing myself and also getting a 5k in rather quickly. I liked the challenge and feel that I could have ran a whee bit faster than I was supposed to, but I'm sticking with what Bing has prescribed for a few weeks to see what I think overall and to see how I feel when I do these runs outside.

In case you're wondering, Bing has me paced to complete the half marathon in 2:26:48 (which is what I calculated using his M-pace of 6:41). My Tempo pace is 6:14 with my easy pace being 7:20 (all per KM). I'll be very happy to finish under 2:30:00, but of course the competitor in me will likely set a more aggressive A goal closer to the date.

In all, the vacation was good, but I'm also glad to be back to training.