Sunday is usually when I do my longest run of the week, and today was no different.  I had a ninety minute run workout on my schedule.  It wasn’t just a standard long run however.  It was a descending run, where the first thirty minutes were easy pace and then it got faster from there.  The final thirty minutes were planned as Tempo or Zone 3.  As I got to the park however, my legs felt tired, so I wasn’t sure how the run would go.

I have written before about running on tired legs.  It is part of training for long course triathlons.  I normally find that when starting my run with tired legs, they usually improve after a few miles.  I was hoping that would happen today.

Well the bottom line is, that my legs felt tired for the whole of my run.  My quads in particular were ‘complaining’.  The run felt like the back half of an open marathon, and it required some determination to execute the workout correctly.

Even though it didn’t feel that great, I was able to execute the workout perfectly.  You can see from the chart above, that my pace increased over the first hour and that I was able to hold a nice pace for the final thirty minutes.  I would be very happy to run at that final thirty minute pace, during my upcoming races.

As mentioned, running on tired legs is part of triathlon.  That same tired feeling manifests itself in most races.  This makes workouts like the one I had today, great experience for upcoming events.