After four consecutive Mondays of 60 to 70 minute workouts with a 20 to 30 minute tempo section, today the schedule got cranked up a notch with 85 total minutes of running, including:
- 30 minutes easy
- 5 x 5 min repeats at 7:00 pace (1 min recovery)
- 30 minutes easy
Due to my work schedule this morning, Nathan and I started the workout from the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center just before 5am, when it was still quite dark. About 10 minutes into our initial warmup, Nathan was telling me about finding a Brown Recluse spider in their house last Friday. I was listening to him, looking slightly down, but looked up just in time to see a deer standing a few feet in front of me on the road.
It startled me enough to cause me to jump the side, which in turn caused the deer to jump in the opposite direction into the deep grass. There was another deer immediately behind that also ran away quickly when I jumped. That is the second time when running in Edwin Warner that I almost ran head-on into a deer (This one was a doe….the other time is was a many-point buck). Anyway, we completed the 30 minute warmup through the park with a total of 3.43-miles completed at a leisurely 8:47 average pace.
For the tempo intervals, we ran out and back on the Harpeth River Greenway, and things went very well. 7:00 min pace felt extremely comfortable and controlled. My Garmin “average pace” indicator did some weird things as we ran in and out of tree cover, but according to the distance reading we were very consistent between sets with .72, .71, .72, .72, and .72-miles completed. In total we completed 3.59-miles in 25:06 for an average pace of 6:59.6.
During the tempo intervals (and again during the cool down) we heard a couple of woodpeckers that sounded like machine guns going off. I was again reminded of my running friend Susan who always says that she hears at least one woodpecker on every run.
For our final, 30-minute cool down section we ran back in Edwin Warner Park on a reverse route to our 30-minute warmup. We were running through a short section right beside the Little Harpeth River, when I noticed a majestic looking hawk (I’m guessing red tailed) standing on the ground beside the path. We will occasionally see owls sitting in trees in the park, but I don’t ever recall seeing a hawk that wasn’t in flight. What a beautiful, beautiful creature!
We finished our run back at the Nature Center after adding another 3.5-miles at 8:36 average pace during our 30-minute cool down. Since our pace was a bit quicker than the warmup, we ended up doing a very short section on the blue trail to add a few minutes to our time.
In total we finished 10.51-miles for the morning at an 8:07 average pace with warmup and cool down. Another good morning!
Beast Mode….ON!