Indian Creek Trail Tempo Run...

I cannot explain how glad I am to be back running outside! Granted, the trail was not as pretty as in this picture, what with some remaining snow on the sides and not quite as much life in the trees, but man, I love this trail and I love getting back off the treadmill and onto the pavement! I had a 7 mile Tempo Run scheduled so I thought I'd try out my Garmin Forerunner 405cx's workout feature. It worked well in some respects, but I doubt I'll use it again. It was good to have the reminder beeps to let me know if I was going too slow, but it does not warn you if you are going too fast. Also, the timer stopped right on the programmed 7 miles even though I decided I wanted to run a little further, that was frustrating. Also, it apparently overrode the lap feature so I don't have the normal half mile splits that I like to see, it just shows the 1 mile warm up, 5 mile tempo and 1 mile cool down as laps. Overall, I like the function of the workouts, but I think I'll go back to doing things on my own. Anyway, back to the run itself. It was 61 degrees and sunny when I started! NICE!! The trail was sloppy given the amount of snow that has melted over the last few days, and the cold water from that melting snow made the pavement slick in places. Because of that I had to slow it down a little and really watch my footing so I didn't slip and fall. I didn't, which is good given that I can be prone to some clumsiness from time to time. I did 7 mile in 1:05:00, odd to hit an exact minute like that! Average pace of 9:13 which is 5 seconds per mile faster than just the 5 mile tempo part should have been according to my training plan. I believe that just like last year getting outside will greatly improve my speed. Overall a nice run and I'm looking forward to the continued warm up outside! Here's a link to the run in Garmin Connect: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/68652516

Also of note: I've added 2 races (sort of) to my plan for the year! I recently became aware of a St. Patrick's Day 10k preceded by a 2 mile Fun Run in my old college town of Manhattan, KS!!! I have a 5k planned there that they do at homecoming, but it'll be great to do one sooner also. They are March 19th and I figured it's only an extra 5 buck to do the 2 mile along with the 10k so I'll do both. Might as well use the 2 mile as a warm up for my first 10k race!! It's going to be fun to race through the old Kansas State University campus!! It's a pretty place with lots of memories!