My wife and I ran at the park today. We don’t run at the same pace, so we don’t run together, but it is nice to get our workouts done at the same time. For my run this morning, I chose to repeat the exact same run, that I did a week ago. I thought it might be interesting to compare them. 

The route I took was a four and a half mile loop around the lake.  The goal for the run was to take the first half at a steady pace to warm up. The second half would also be mostly the same pace, except for two sections that are uphill.  On those uphill sections, I would increase my pace to that of a hard tempo effort.

The two hills are both a little over a quarter of a mile long.  Neither hill is steep, so it is possible to run them quite fast. The first hill has an average grade of 2%, while the second is steeper at 2.5%.  It takes a little over two minutes of hard effort, to get up the hills.

In comparing today’s run to the one I did last week, I discovered that they were remarkably similar.  My average pace for the whole run was only 3 seconds per mile different.  This week I ran the first hill quicker. I ran the second hill a little quicker last week.  In both cases, the two times for the hills were only a few seconds apart.

I suppose it is not surprising that the results from doing the exact same run, just a week apart, were so similar. Having said that, I am encouraged by the results.  I am a week deeper into my training block this week, and so fatigue is starting to build. Achieving similar results under greater fatigue is a good sign that my fitness is building. I’ll take that as a win.