wicked pre-dawn tempo run

So I had a busy day today but I really wanted to fit in the 40 minute tempo run my plan called for.   Because I had an 8am meeting at work, a lunch date, and one of my boyfriends friends was staying on our couch I decided to commute in to work and run from here. I even got up at 5:30, 30 minutes earlier then your average running day.  That way I won’t wake up the couch sleeper, I will get a flatter course to run my tempo on, and I can run part of next week’s 10K course.

My calf was feeling good. I had a total date with it last night, we stretched, we rolled, we iced, we had an epsom salt bath.  Thanks for all the suggestions that way.  Apparently the calf is re-evaluating our relationship and deciding to stay put at least for now.  It was also a beautiful morning and watching the sunrise over the city and mountain was absolutely spectacular. At first I was a little wigged out to be running alone, in the dark across the bridges and basically downtown but I acclimatized. I think it was when I finally overtook a fellow jogger crossing the Cambie street bridge. When I caught up with him he was this little old Chinese man running in socks. Awesome.  Suddenly I felt safer for some reason.  I think it was because he looked so very harmless.

I programmed my Garmin for 40 minutes @ 9:20-9:40 pace. My goal tempo pace is 9:25/9:30.  However, I learned something about ye-old Garmin software. I think I put 9:20-9:40 instead of 9:40-9:20 and it wanted to keep my pace below 9:20!!!  Whoops.   Well, I didn’t want to stop it and attempt to change it while I was running so I just dealt with it and tried to ignore the beeping.  Obviously that didn’t work, so I just ran faster.  Its kinda awesome since that made me faster, it certainly was a challenge especially crossing the Burrard bridge.  But it gave me great hopes for my 10K on Monday.    I really want to check out my mile splits, but I am at work so it will have to wait until I can upload the data.

In the end my tempo stats were:

• Distance: 4.3 miles
• Time: 40 minutes
• Average Pace: 9:18

Overall including warm-up and cooldown:

• Distance: 5.46 miles
• Time: 52:50
• Avg Pace: 9:41
• Avg/Max HR: 152/172
• Cals:  582

Oh, and did I mention that my 8am meeting was cancelled at 7:57?  Seriously. I got to my desk, logged in and quickly scanned my email. Then I went to get tea and cereal, by the time I was back the meeting was cancelled.  Oh well, it was worth it, it was such a great run . 

healthy meal idea of the day:

Winter squash, oh how I love thee!!! Check out this delicious sweet and spicy rub I did on a Kabocha.