XC Tempo

Dusted off the XC spikes and ran a 20 minute tempo on the grass perimeter alongside the Lakewood Park paved mile loop. Workout went really well with me going 6:25, 6:19 (12:44), 6:12 (18:56) enroute to the full 20 minutes. The effort felt about the same as when I ran 6:10 pace a few weeks ago for my road tempo though the legs definitely got worked more due to the uneven grass surface. Some spots where a little mushy and others rock hard. Felt good though and I feel strong. Normally my differential from track/roads to grass is more like 15-20 seconds per mile so keeping it just under 10 seconds today has me feeling good about club nationals. I've been training 5 weeks on the one hard workout a week system now and it definitely seems to be clicking with me. The longer runs in the week are getting me stronger and the days off in between are allowing me to really recover. If you're in a rut, read the Rich Stiller article I linked a while back. Next week I think I'll do my 6-5-4-3-2-1 fartlek on grass in spikes again. That workout always works really well for me but I've never done it off road.