Need for Speed (and motivation!)

I am officially 12 weeks post calf strain! Woohoo!!

Since I haven't had any additional issues with my calf since the injury, I have decided that I am ready to start adding in some speed work once a week. For now I am going to focus on tempo runs. As I've mentioned previously, I am using McMillan Running to determine my training paces.

Tempo runs, or threshold runs, are supposed to "challenge [my] threshold between easy and hard." My pace for these runs should be between 7:37 - 7:55. I aimed for about 7:55 last night for about 2.5 miles. About halfway into the run, I realized I would not be able to maintain that pace for that distance so I cut it down to just under 2 miles. Since these runs are supposed to be medium effort, I wanted to feel challenged, but not out of control (if that makes sense).

Warm up: 1.46 miles in 14:00 (9:35 pace)
Tempo: 1.92 miles in 14:58 (7:48 pace)
Cool down: 1.78 miles in 16:34 (9:18 pace)

I plan to keep increasing the distance of the tempo portion as my training progresses. I will probably top out around 5 miles, or about 40 minutes. I was pleased to discover that when I went out for an easy run on Wednesday that I didn't have any residual soreness from putting in a hard workout.

Hello new running shoes!

The weather is nice and I have some new running gear from Christmas to test out, but I am feeling completely drained of motivation. I'm not sure if I am just tired from having a couple busy days or if I might be coming down with a cold or something. I had a tickle of a sore throat this morning, but I feel fine right now, just lazy.