Saturday Bay Run - 16km Tempo

A nice little surprise by Gary this morning when I asked him what today's session was after warming up. His response - a '16km tempo.' Should have seen this coming, as he had not scheduled a second run for me today (always a sign, at least I now know for the future). But despite my whinging above, I secretly am a closet fan of long tempo runs - something about my physiology allows me to literally back off a second or two per kilometer and stupidly hold it twice as long. 16km equated to two-and-a-bit laps of the Bay. Gary's instructions were to hold 3:30's, and only push harder towards the end if I felt ok. He and Lucy were going 6km, and were going to attempt 3:30's, so he suggested I hold onto them for the initial 6km. As always with these sessions, it felt comfortably hard. Got through the first lap holding 3:28's and feeling fine. The second lap started to feel harder - but then again the pace was increasing without realising. Each kilometer my watch would display a time that was far too quick - one came out at 3:17! So kept telling myself to back it off somewhat. I felt I did this, but the times stayed slightly faster than usual (not necessarily a bad thing, I shouldn't be complaining). Ended up averaging 3:25 for the entire 16km. It was only myself, Gemma and Tom do Canto running the long tempo efforts. Tom is in great form at the moment, after a strong 6FT and Sun Run (winning both) and held a solid 3:16 average for the same run. That would be nice! A slow and easy 5km jog with Tom back to King George Park for 25km all up. Saw Hoey out there again this morning, looking very strong and pushing it! Feel bad as I am well and truly overdue a breakfast with him! It will happen, I promise!