My training is winding down; I am in the middle of my taper right now with the Indianapolis Monumental Half Marathon just a week away.
I went out this morning for a 5k “time trial” because I was too cheap and lazy to go run a race. The Running Wizard plan I’ve been following says that I should try to run that in 24:42, or about 30 seconds faster than the 5K that I ran in June. That was the race that I used to setup the plan.
It was cold this morning.. 39 degrees with 12MPH winds gusting to 20MPH. This is exactly the kind of weather that I hate! Chilly and windy, but not chilly enough to be really bundled up, and too windy to dress down. I set the Garmin up for a warmup, 3.1 mile interval, then cooldown. The warmup wasn’t long because I figured my legs would start to cool off after going outside!
I started off running at a comfortably fast pace, and noticed after about a 1/2 mile that I was running a 7:46 pace. That sounded fast. I decided to try to dial the speed back a little bit, but I was still near the 7:50 – 7:55 range each time I looked at my watch. I felt like slowing around the 2.75 mile mark but I managed to hang on and finished the time trial in 24:20 for a 7:51 pace. That was 48 seconds faster than the 5K I ran in June, though still 30 seconds off my PR (Maybe I can hit that on my turkey trot in a month?).
So I decided to see what speed McMillan predicts for my half based upon this time trial. 1:52:40. And what did Running Wizard predict at the start of my plan? 1:52:28. Wow. It seems that my training has all come together.