The wrong way to run 49 minutes . . .

Holy cow! I had the hardest workout today! It was a HUGE fail, too! Well, kind of!

After driving for almost 9 hours yesterday and then watching the Superbowl, I opted to sleep in this morning and tempo later. I was forced with either a lunch time tempo or an evening tempo and for whatever reason, my friend Nate and I decided upon lunch time.

I even met him at Bayshore to set myself up for success. My schedule said 7:15-7:45-7:15-7:45-7:15-7:45 I was actually secretly excited about this run because I thought I could nail it. I've been doing my tempos around the 7:20 pace, but have only been running around 3 miles at a time at that pace. This stretches it to six miles - even though 3 are slower! Not to mention, this workout is supposed to make the 7:45 mile feel slow. Who doesn't want "easy" to be 7:45? Anyway, I thought this would be a great workout mentally for me, especially if I nailed it.

It's 75 degrees, sunny and pretty humid! The wind was blowing, but I didn't realize how much until we began.

After half a mile warm up, we restarted our Garmins and took off. I was surprised. .25 in and we were running at a 6:19 pace. Weird! I knew that 6 miles was a long way though, so we tried to slow it down.

It was SOOOO hot for the first three miles. I seriously haven't been that hot in at least 4 months! Occasionally, we could feel the wind behind us. Well, it was always behind us but at some points it was pushing us forward. In retrospect, I should have ran faster but I didn't want to exceed the times too much in fear of not finishing.

After a speedy start, we finished the first mile in 7:01. Mile two was slower - as planned - but still ahead of pace: 7:33 Mile three was dead on: 7:14. 3 miles in 21:49!! Not a bad way to begin a tempo . . .

Until we turned around. It was windy. Like you cannot move any faster and easy=hard kind of windy! Really, really windy! I made up my mind that I couldn't finish the workout but that I would run at a little faster than "easy" pace. Okay, so my next mile: 9:32. I'm not even kidding, not even a little. I felt like I was running up hill and into wind. Most the way back, my eyes were shut, too. There was dirt and leaves flying everywhere. The good? It wasn't so hot, the wind was keeping me cool. But, seriously, it would have been hard to even walk in this!

I didn't stop for water. I told myself I didn't deserve it. Afterall, Nate decided to finish the workout, no matter what the effort was. I decided to give effort and not worry about the pace. Hmmmm. Mile 5: 9:07 and Mile 6: 9:06.

Those were three of the hardest miles I've ever run. It took everything out of me to not walk, not stop for a mental break and not get water. I forced myself to keep going telling myself I didn't deserve water! I guess that was the positive.

I'd say that those last three miles were equivalent to an 8:15-8:20 pace effort. No joke.

Nate finished and hit the times. We decided that he really ran 6:20-6:30 pace to hit the times.

So, after a 3 mile start in 21:50ish, I finished 6 miles in 49:32. Crazy! When I got back to my car, I checked the weather. 75 degrees with 24 mph winds - and we were running on the Bay, so they were probably even worse than that!

Jaime = 0
Wind = 1

Let's just hope we don't face this kind of wind during my next half that is on that course!!