.4 mile warmup then 10 miles of tempo in 4/3/2/1 with 3/2/1 minutes rest, then 2.4 mile cooldown. I guess I'm just going to throw out a lot of random thoughts about this workout and otherwise.
As I often do, I ran on a treadmill, at least until the cooldown, which was outdoors. For someone of my abilities, the altitude at my gym, 4700', is almost exactly enough to make a 10-13 mile tempo run on a treadmill equal in pace to a flat run on track on a still day at sea level, so I run my workouts on a treadmill sometimes to prepare myself for lower elevation racing I feel better and race faster when my muscles have memory for a specific pace at a specific effort. If today's was a pure 10 mile run in 57:06, it'd have been worth 57:21 on a flat windless track at sea level with similar temperature. On a flat track at altitude, it'd have been worth 59:26, ie 14 seconds per mile slower.
In any case, the workout went really well.
4 miles: 23:31
3 minutes rest
3 miles: 17:15
2 minutes rest
2 miles: 11:06
1 minute rest
1 mile: 5:15
I made a point to not start insanely fast, but to finish as fast as possible. This make the workout a little interesting. From about mile 6 on, I was working pretty hard, and the last two reps were pretty tough. Starting the 10th mile after only 1 minute of rest felt cruel, and I was hurting almost instantly. 5:15 after 9 fast miles is tough, even on a treadmill.
Most importantly, I get to move my legs 14 seconds per mile more quickly than I would've on a track here, which is important. I need a lot of fast work to prepare properly for St George. Of course, the gentle finish of that race allows people to coast in really well even if they're dying (unlike, say, Des News, which will brutalize you with that uphill on Foothill... man, am I never racing that race...), but I need to be used to running really fast for a long time if I want to run a really fast time there (ideally, under 2:35, so I have a sub-6 pace conversion according to Daniels).
I did an almost identical workout with more rest on the same treadmill last season, so comparing the numbers, I see that I'm pretty close to where I was at in late January last year. That time, I started faster, but finished the last two about the same, with more rest. Splits then were 22:58, 17:00, 11:05, 5:16. I would say that workout was similar, maybe overall ever-so-slightly stronger, but I was several weeks farther into the cycle. Also, I intentionally started conservatively today, and in hindsight, probably could've hit those same times from January if I had gone for it. I'll be more aggressive next time.
Now, one more thought for overall development... Talking with James on our run yesterday, I've decided that my in-season consistency isn't enough. I need to not take 4 months off in the future if I really want to get fast. I need overall year-in-year-out consistency. I of course need short off seasons, but they need to only be a few weeks or a month tops. If I'm going to get to sub-70 and sub-2:30 on fair courses, I need to be serious all year, not just when I have a race coming up. I'm really going to try hard to commit to this idea in the future.
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